East Hampton Helicopter Noise

If you call the Noise Complaint Hotline; 631-537-LOUD; the message states that only complaints logged on the noise complaint hotline will be addressed. What does that mean? How are the noise complaints being addressed? Is the Town of East Hampton being honest with us? Or, Is the Town just trying to placate us? I think it would be extremely dishonest and disingenuous for the Town to encourage its citizens to call in complaints on this hotline, make its citizens believe something was being done and then down right do nothing to correct the problem. Ahhh, but the message did not say they would correct the noise problem…it said they will address the complaint…so what does that mean? The video says it all…the noise problem with helicopters still exists. Should the question rather be…When will the noise complaints be addressed? Maybe this is a cruel joke on the citizens of East Hampton. You can decide.

I have been logging helicopter noise complaints on the Noise Complaint Hotline for seventeen months. The data for thirteen months of phone calls is available on the right side of this website. I only call when I am at home; anyone that knows me can verify I am rarely home even on weekends. That is what makes the data so compelling. Each time I call I leave my name, address and phone number as instructed on the message. I also give the time, from my cell phone, the noise level recorded on a handheld digital noise level meter and comments regarding the level of flight or any other observations I had. If I extrapolated the number of calls I made in thirteen months to a period of seventeen months, it will calculate to over five hundred phone calls. That is just incredible. Why has nothing been done to correct this problem? It is our government’s responsibility to protect the people. What are they doing?

I purchased my property in a residential district. Zoning laws provided that my property would be separated from the noise impacts of commercial operations existing in the Town of East Hampton until a few years ago. The Town has permitted its property, the East Hampton Airport, to be used for the commercial operations of helicopters and seaplanes that ferry passengers to and from East Hampton. As a result of these commercial operations residential property owners find themselves being impacted by extreme noise pollution from above. If the Town of East Hampton prohibited commercial operations of aircraft on its own property then the extreme noise pollution impacting the residential district will cease. The Town only needs to enforce its own zoning laws on its own property. Why hasn’t this noise problem been addressed yet? If I didn’t pay my taxes for the same period of time I am positive that situation would be addressed. If I were the owner of the Surf Lodge, for example, just playing music for my patrons and the Town takes steps to address noise complaints there but not by operations on Town property, I would be upset. How can the Town not address the noise complaints caused by operations on their own property? Is that hypocrisy? Do as I say…Not as I do.

I decided to stop calling complaints into the noise complaint hotline. Why bother if the Town is unwilling to address the problem. Seventeen months is a very long time and should have been sufficient time if the Town had intentions to correct the problem. Will they tell you they did address the noise complaints? Instead I will shoot videos of the helicopters because the pictures and sound are worth a lot more than a thousand words. We will be able to record an incredible amount of evidence. We are able to identify the owners of these helicopters since we can get the tail numbers from the video. Non-compliance to noise abatement will be documented. Safety concerns of flying too low will be able to be documented. When an accident occurs we will have evidence of the reckless operations of certain operators and their pilots. Who knows, maybe we might initiate our own legal action against the helicopter operators, the pilots or the Town of East Hampton. For now we will continue to gather video evidence and post it here on this website for all to see and perhaps for all to use.