Anti-Noise Crescendo

In the wake of an East Hampton Town Board forum on aircraft noise that drew almost 400 people to LTV Studios on Aug. 27, the East Hampton Village Board unanimously voted in favor of a resolution last Thursday urging the town board to adopt a comprehensive aircraft noise-limitation policy that would include evening and weekend curfews. On Tuesday the Sag Harbor Village Board did the same.

Almost all the East End municipalities — the Southampton, Shelter Island, and Southold Town Boards and the North Haven Village Board — have already passed similar resolutions.

The East Hampton Village resolution refers to “excessive aircraft noise from the ever-increasing traffic of jets, seaplanes, and other propeller aircraft and helicopters approaching and leaving the East Hampton Airport” that “for years has interfered with the East End residents’ peaceful enjoyment of their properties.” A copy of the Sag Harbor resolution was not available Tuesday night.

The East Hampton Village resolution, like those passed in nearby municipalities, asks the town board to “refuse to seek any further Federal Aviation Administration funding,” which allows that agency a degree of control over East Hampton Airport. Bruce Siska, an East Hampton Village Board member who read the resolution aloud, said the Village of Southampton has done that with respect to the heliport at the end of Meadow Lane. A noise-limitation policy, Mr. Siska read, would seek “all other reasonable airport access restrictions” in addition to curfews, including limiting numbers and concentrations of flights and banning the noisiest aircraft to the extent allowed by law.

Several of the F.A.A.’s grant assurances that give it control over East Hampton Airport operations are set to expire on Dec. 31. The village board’s resolution asks the town board to plan to operate the airport as “a self-sustaining enterprise,” and to provide the village board 60 days’ notice of “any future change in airport policy that might have an adverse impact” on village residents and their properties.

Moving aircraft routes is no solution to excessive noise-impact burdens from ever-increasing air traffic, Mr. Siska said, “as exhibited by the 40-percent increase in helicopter traffic this season alone.”

Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. said that he supports the East Hampton Airport, which he called “an asset to the community.” Nonetheless, he called the resolution “a culmination of listening to others” and “the right statement that we go on record as providing at this time.”

“It’s what’s happened over the last number of years, specifically as it relates to the helicopter traffic and just the sheer number” of flights into and out of the airport, he said, that prompted the resolution.

Kathleen Cunningham, director of the Quiet Skies Coalition, which seeks to reduce the noise and air pollution resulting from the airport, told the mayor that her group also supports the airport’s existence. “Closing it has never been our intention,” she said. “We just want to rein it in a little.”