Courtesy of Queens Quiet Skies:
Dear Neighbors:
JACKSON HEIGHTS GREENMARKET
Six QQS members went to the Jackson Heights Greenmarket on Sunday with our table and literature. In less than five hours, we signed up 196 new members of Queens Quiet Skies! We had people patiently waiting in line to sign up It was a wonderful result of hard work, advance planning and preparation. Thanks once again to our community outreach team. You are the best! We will have some photos in the next Newsletter.
Council Member Dan Dromm joined us at the table for an hour. We very much appreciate his continued support and his assistance in finding such a good spot for our table.
I also want to thank Andriette Redmann and John Rokosny, QQS members who own a video production company called NYMVP. They made a video of the event and I am looking forward to seeing it.
I have been deciphering almost two hundred new email addresses since Sunday. I’m afraid not everyone’s handwriting was as neat as our first-grade teachers would have liked. If your neighbor or friend complains about not getting anything from QQS, please ask them to send me their email address again. Thanks!
We welcome all our new Jackson Heights members. Because we have so many new readers of the QQS Newsletter, I will fill in some background where necessary as I go along. I hope our other members who already are familiar with it will understand and be patient.
WE LOVE A PARADE!
While we were at the Greenmarket, we got an invitation to march in the Queens Pride Parade in Jackson Heights on June 7th, starting at noon. We can all march together under our QQS banner. Bring your friends, family and neighbors. I will give you all the details as I get them.
PART 150 AIRPORT NOISE COMPATIBILITY STUDIES – AIRPORT OPEN HOUSES
When we started Queens Quiet Skies in 2012, we had four goals. One of them was to have the Port Authority undertake Part 150 airport noise compatibility studies around JFK and LGA. In November, 2013, Gov. Cuomo directed the Port Authority to begin those studies. The preliminaries are finished and the studies are underway.
Sharp-eyed QQS member Mary Donahue saw a notice in the Daily News classified ads yesterday about the Port Authority’s Part 150 study open houses for the public. There will be one at each airport. There will be no formal presentations and you can arrive and depart anytime within the open house hours. The workshops will have guided displays and you can talk to some of the consultants. The LGA Part 150 study public workshop is on June 16th at the NY LGA Airport Marriott Hotel from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM. The JFK Part 150 study public workshop will be on June 17th at the Radisson Hotel at JFK Airport from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM.
AN EXCELLENT BLOG POST AND NEWSPAPER ARTICLES ABOUT LGA
I am pasting in a link to a terrific blog post. It comes from Jeff Lewis’ blog, which is full of great information. Jeff is a former air traffic controller and FAA whistleblower. I was planning to explain the LGA perimeter rule and slot caps in this newsletter but he’s done it for me. Thanks to Susan Carroll for passing this along. It is definitely worth reading:
http://aireform.com/faas-
The article he references in the post can be found here:
Within Jeff’s blog post is a link to a recent NYT oped article by George Hakailis, suggesting that LGA simply be closed down.
BAYSIDE NOISE MONITOR
Another of our original QQS goals was to increase the number of noise monitors around JFK and LGA. Gov. Cuomo suggested to the Port Authority that they buy some new monitors and they’ve done that. Our Bayside noise monitor has to be relocated, so I asked you all last week to suggest good sites for it. Many of you offered space in your backyards and on your terraces. I have finished collecting the suggestions and will forward them to the Port Authority Noise Office tomorrow. If the PA noise staff thinks you’ve got a viable location, you will hear from them in the next few weeks. Thanks to all for your help and enthusiasm.
NAC PUBLIC MEETING AUDIO FEED
The NAC (and how to get on it) has been a QQS obsession since the summer of 2013. We have been asking to have QQS appointed as a member of the NAC since then. FAA Administrator Huerta keeps losing our letters or forgetting to answer them. It’s always something.
The NextGen Advisory Committee is a group administered by an aviation industry group called the RTCA. The Committee is financially supported in part by our Federal tax dollars via a contract between the RTCA and the U.S. DOT. The committee develops NextGen technology procedures. There are 28 members, 27 of whom represent the FAA, the aviation industry and the Air Force. There is one public member, currently the President of the N.O.I.S.E. organization.
The NAC holds several public meetings a year. The notices always say a few seats in the meeting room are available to the public. I asked the RTCA’s president, Margaret Jenny, to livestream the public meetings. For the first time ever, the NAC will provide a free public audio stream of its June 5, 2015, public meeting. This will be an important meeting, with consequences for everyone around the country. Among other things, the NAC members will be discussing the “Blueprint for the Implementation of NextGen.” As soon as I have the audio feed information, I will send it to you. I hope at least one of you will be able to record it.
“FIXING” THE FUTURE OF AVIATION
A debate about the future of aviation is going on in Congress now. In October, the FAA will get its marching orders and money from Congress for the next three years in the 2015 FAA reauthorization bill. One of the discussions is about privatizing FAA functions, particularly air traffic control.
We have asked Rep. Bill Shuster, chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, to allow communities to testify at the committee hearings on the reauthorization bill. Our letters have never been answered. But every aviation industry player in the country will have a chance to address the committee. I thought you might be interested in reading this Forbes article, which gives one side of the conversation:
Fixing The Future: It’s 20 Years Late, But Congress Finally Is Ready To Privatize The FAA – Forbes
You may also be interested in this peek into how our aviation decisions are being made by the House committee:
RECORD PROFITS CONTINUE FOR THE AIRLINES
Here’s a news article for all of us.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/
This is a continuation of last year’s record billions for the airlines and other players in the aviation and tourist industries. While we are always happy to see companies making money, we think they ought to be plowing some of those record profits into relieving the safety and health burdens they’ve imposed on us. As we always say, we’re all for people making money – just not at our expense.
HELICOPTERS IN THE HAMPTONS
Our friends at the east end of Suffolk County have been suffering from a surfeit of helicopters ferrying the rich and famous to their Hamptons homes. Yesterday, a week before the summer season begins, a judge in East Hampton delayed ruling on a bid by the helicopter trade association to throw out new municipal regulations on helicopter noise. This is an interesting and important legal fight. It even made the news in the U.K.:
NEW NEXTGEN-RELATED BLOG FROM PROSPECT PARK QUIET SKIES
Jeff Starin, President and Principal of Prospect Park Quiet Skies, has started a new blog. It is open for submissions about anything legitimate dealing with the detrimental effects of NextGen in all locations. Studies, alerts, videos, news reports, local news from member organizations or individuals with stories to tell are welcome. The address is:
www.NextGenNoise.org and www.NextGenNoise.Com http://bit.ly/1A2YYq2?
I always say this is a long, tough battle. Don’t expect miracles overnight. However, I can truthfully say I am beginning to believe the tide is turning in our favor. Maybe not this year, but we will see a victory. Keep hanging in there.
Thanks for everything you do. It all counts.
Janet
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