Residents of Bayside, Little Neck, Douglaston and Auburndale have for two years been living under the terrible noise of the new take-off route out of LaGuardia Airport called the TENIS Climb. Planes fly low and often and create noise that precludes outdoor conversations, and even [indoor conversations through] open windows. Moreover, the expectation is that our homes will lose value permanently, unless we get relief. A writer in the local press, quoting a real estate journal, recently estimated the loss of property value at between 15 and 30 percent, adding to tens of billions of dollars. After all, who will want to buy an expensive house under a noisy take-off route? We all came here looking for a quality, and quiet, community. How did this happen?
On February 6, 2012, Congress enacted the Republican-sponsored so-called FAA Modernization and Reform Act (FAAMRA). It did so with Sen. Charles Schumer’s support and vote. All of our local congress members and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand voted against the bill, as did the majority of Democrats in the Congress. That act authorized appropriations for the FAA in the usual manner. However it also exempted all new area navigation and navigation procedures from environmental review pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), as had been done in the past. FAAMRA states that in the sole determination of the FAA Administrator any efficiency in aircraft operations “shall be presumed to have no significant affect (sic) on the quality of the human environment.”
This is so, despite the fact that, in many cases, the new procedures have impacted numerous communities like ours that have never before been overflown, or never overflown in the same quantity and at such low altitudes. Newly affected populations, like us, were thereby deprived of an avenue of redress in the courts through NEPA, on which they have come to depend for generations.
As I understand it, the FAA will need a new reauthorization in 2015 so that it can continue to operate. That legislation may be our last chance to amend the act so as to give our communities the relief we so desperately need. Senator Schumer can help make that happen. We need to hear from him.
Melvyn Meer
Bayside
