By Doug Miller
Damian Sciano, an engineer with Consolidated Edison, has served as chairman of Long Beach's Planning Advisory Board for about 18 months and has acted as the city's liaison between the administration and Sacardi and Schiff, the planning firm the city hired to write its next master plan.
For Sciano, air traffic to Kennedy Airport over the city has been an issue for years, but recent developments have he said brought the issue to critical mass.
"In the past 10 years, airport traffic has increased dramatically with no environmental assessment, and no justification," he said. In addition to emissions, Sciano said he would like concerns about noise pollution and the danger a plane crash poses to people on the ground.
In Belle Harbor, Brooklyn in 2001, five people on the ground were killed along with everyone on board when a plane crashed on takeoff from JFK. He said that given the frequency of flights in and out of JFK, another such tragedy is just a matter of time.
"There are 320,000 takeoffs and landings," Sciano said. "So even if we are talking about a 1 in a million occurrence, it's only three years."
In a letter to the editor of the Long Beach Herald printed last week, City Council President James Hennessy endorsed the idea of a citizens commission, saying the airport, while vital to the region's economy, can certainly be a better neighbor.
"Long Beach is negatively impacted by more than 650 of the 800+ flights departing and arriving JFK airport each day and that up to 75 percent of these flyovers can be avoided through more considerate air traffic routing over water rather than land." Hennessy wrote. "Incredibly, many current flight patterns traverse the entire island rather than flying over the open ocean or taking the shortest path over our thin island. This creates a tremendous amount of noise, air pollution and safety issues that are being unduly and unnecessarily placed on Long Beach, especially in a post-9/11 and post-Flight 587 world."
The complaints extend beyond noise. Long Beach averages almost one dead body falling out of a plane and landing in or near the city each year. Stowaways often try to steal a ride into the U.S. aboard the wheelwell of a jet when it refuels overseas. However, the trip across the Atlantic in the unpressurized, oxygen-free wheelwell, where temperatures can drop 100 degrees below freezing, is essentially unsurvivable without extensive preparation. As the planes make their approach to JFK and lower their landing gear, the bodies wind up in Long Beach backyards.
Most recently, the severed leg of a stowaway fell from a South African Airways jet onto a house in Floral Park, mangling the roof before landing in the yard.
Anyone interested in serving on the this citizen's advisory board can contact planadvisorybrd@longbeachny.org. Everyone is encouraged to participate. If you are part of the airline industry, environmental services or media personnel, please highlight your affiliation.
In addition, Hennessy asked the Planning Advisory Board to present this topic to the community on Sept. 1 at 7 p.m. in the Long Beach Library Auditorium. For more information, visit http://www.s93016253.onlinehome.us; and select "Air Traffic Reduction" from the menu.
Comments about this story? Dmiller@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 213.
