Laws Adopted, but Taken to Court

The future of East Hampton Airport, as may have been expected, remained up in the air this week. While the East Hampton Town Board voted unanimously last Thursday to adopt an 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. curfew and to extend that curfew from 8 p.m. to 9 a.m. for planes in a “noisy aircraft” category, a coalition of aviation businesses filed suit on Tuesday, asking the court for an injunction against the laws’ enactment and demanding a jury trial. The suit alleges that the town’s rules are pre-empted by federal airport law and policy and violate the Constitution’s commerce clause.

In addition to the curfews, a limit of one takeoff and landing per week for noisy aircraft during the busy summer season, from May 1 through September, was adopted. The latter restriction was approved by a 4-to-1 vote, with Councilman Fred Overton, the sole Republican on the board, dissenting. Mr. Overton said he was not as convinced as other board members that the weekly limit would “bring as many benefits” as surmised. Instead, he said, it would “seriously inconvenience many airport users.”

  A full ban on helicopters at the airport from Thursdays through Mondays during the season had originally been proposed, but it was dropped when concerns were raised about its impact on neighboring communities.

The question of how much authority the town, as owner of the airport, has over operation of the facility has been central to discussions of the aircraft noise problem for years. Since last summer, the town board has, with an aviation attorney and several consultants, been engaged in data collection and analysis to develop legal footing for use restrictions. As part of the national air transportation system and a past recipient of federal airport grants, however, the town airport also falls under Federal Aviation Administration jurisdiction.

In a statement issued Tuesday, East Hampton Town officials said the lawsuit, which was anticipated, “is entirely predictable and contains no surprises.”

“We have, with surgical precision, defined precise restrictions that limit only the most disturbing operations at East Hampton Airport,” the statement said. The plaintiffs, it went on, “don’t admit that the restrictions are narrowly targeted to address the operations of most concern that generate the most disturbance — and that the restrictions will not affect almost 80 percent of the operations at the airport.”

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit, filed in federal court, include Friends of the East Hampton Airport; the Analar Corporation, a New Jersey helicopter charter company; Associated Aircraft Group, a Connecticut corporation, and Heliflite Shares, a Newark-based company, both of which offer helicopter charters along with fractional ownership shares; Liberty Helicopters of New Jersey, a charter service; Eleventh Street Aviation, a Delaware-based limited-liability corporation that owns a helicopter and a jet that is based at East Hampton Airport; Helicopter Association International, a trade group, and Sound Aircraft Services, an East Hampton business that provides fuel and other services at the airport.

The town acted after the suspension of several contractual agreements with the F.A.A. regarding airport operation, called grant assurances, as of the beginning of this year, and after receiving a letter from the F.A.A. stating that the town is also not subject to the federal Airport Noise and Capacity Act, which restricts the ability of airport owners to regulate certain aircraft.

The lawsuit takes the opposite stance, asserting that “in adopting the restrictions, the town has knowingly and purposefully transgressed the bounds of its extremely limited authority.” 

While citing federal law and the Constitution, town officials said, the complaint “conveniently forgets . . . the years of studies, analyses, public meetings, consultations with airport users, and deliberative process and town board deliberations that led to the three restrictions,” and the “the many, many steps that led to the town board decision that these restrictions are necessary — steps that included federally mandated flight paths for helicopters, voluntary flight paths for all aircraft, voluntary curfews, voluntary altitude requirements, and other measures.”

“All of these efforts proved ineffective,” town officials wrote in their statement. It goes on to say the town “has patiently waited” for the several grant assurance obligations to expire before acting. More than 300 people from across the East End attended a forum last summer held by the board to gather information about the impact of aircraft noise, and a large majority supported action by the town to address it.

“The town is fully prepared for this litigation and will vigorously defend its legal and constitutional right to impose reasonable, nonarbitrary, and carefully balanced restrictions. Plaintiffs raise issues that we are fully prepared to defend. The issues that plaintiffs raise have been litigated over and over again in lawsuits throughout the nation and airport proprietors have consistently won. While we anticipated this lawsuit, it is sad that these airport users are now going to force the town to spend scarce airport funds to defend these restrictions rather than working to make this airport the best it can be,” the statement said.

The town is taking an “incremental approach,” the statement noted, that will be re-evaluated and revised as necessary after the coming season, to make sure limits on use of the airport are “only as restrictive as necessary.”

Before casting his vote against the once-weekly round-trip limit, Mr. Overton said that restriction was perhaps going too far too soon, and that, though the town board has vowed to track the impacts of the new regulations and adjust them as needed, he was concerned that, politically, it would be impossible to repeal a restriction once it was put in place.

He acknowledged the work of the board and its advisory committees and consultants who compiled data on the airport and its noise issues, primarily from helicopters, as well as the effort to strike a balance between various interests such as residents seeking relief from noise and airport interests and users.

Mr. Overton also said he was concerned about the impact on nearby airports of diverting aircraft traffic from East Hampton and about lawsuits challenging the laws. While litigation over the adopted airport regulations may be a given, he said, omitting the one trip a week maximum could “reduce our litigation exposure.”

Members of the audience in favor of the new rules applauded after each vote last Thursday night and stood for a sustained ovation once the board had adopted all three.