Southampton Councilwoman Continues Fight Against Aircraft Noise

SOUTHAMPTON, NY — Once again, Southampton Town is standing strong with East Hampton in its quest to address the airport noise abatement issue.

Southampton Town Councilwoman Christine Scalera recently introduced two resolutions approved by the town board.

The first aims to support legislation co-sponsored by New York State Assemblyman Fred Thiele and New York State Senator Ken LaValle, that would allow for more public input on how the East Hampton airport is funded.

The second enables the town to post a link to a noise complaint registry on its website for residents to log complaints regarding aircraft noise.

“It is my hope that continued pressure from affected municipalities such as ours, will help move bills like this forward and further emphasizes to East Hampton Town that they need to bear the burden of noise created as a result of the operations of their airport,” Scalera said. “The passage of this bill will give the public an opportunity to weigh in when East Hampton Town seeks to take grant assurances.”

The state legislation accomplishes by making the acceptance of state or federal assistance for the airport or aviation projects at a town airport where the term of such assistance is ten years or more, subject to permissive referendum, so the public can weigh in, a release states.

Southampton Town will also provide a link to Airnoisereport.com, an online complaint registry where residents can register complaints about loud or excessive aircraft noise, Scalera said.

Since many of the flight paths from the East Hampton Airport are over easterly portions of the Town of Southampton, including communities such as Bridgehampton, Water Mill, Sag Harbor, Noyac, and North Sea, Southampton Town officials want to give residents a place to log complaints.

Information gathered on the site will be provide via monthly reports to the town regarding complaints logged, types of aircraft, and where the complaints were generated.

“One of the members of the town's airport noise advisory committee brought Airnoisereport.com to a town board work session and all of us agreed that our residents need a tool through their own town to log these complaints and to know their voices are being heard from their local leaders,” Scalera said. “I am committed to keep everyone’s feet to the fire at all levels of government until we see some measured relief for our residents here in Southampton Town.”

The link should be live before Memorial Day Weekend; town officials will be working with Airnoisereport.com and the Citizens Response Center in the coming weeks to meet that deadline, Scalera said.