The Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee was expecting a report from Jim Brundige, director of East Hampton Airport, when it met on Saturday morning. But East Hampton Town Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, the town board’s liaison to the committee, told the virtual gathering that, as Mr. Brundige did not yet have the needed information, he would not deliver a report at least until this week.
That gap in the committee’s agenda was filled, and then some, by an extended period of venting about the lack of restrictions on air traffic, which the town had planned to implement in May. New York State Supreme Court Justice Paul Baisley Jr.’s May 16 imposition of a temporary restraining order prevented the move that consultants advised would have addressed upward of 70 percent of complaints about aircraft.
Ms. Overby said that several residents feel that flight paths, which are voluntary, have strayed. “My sense is they have changed a lot,” said Anthony Liberatore, describing “by far” the most helicopters flying over his house over the last four years. He described “a complete abandonment” of the suggestion that helicopters fly above 3,500 feet. In fact, he said, “all are coming in well under 1,500” feet. “They’re coming right up Wainscott Northwest Road,” he said. With Justice Baisley’s temporary restraining order, which remains in place, the plaintiffs in three parallel lawsuits “won this temporary battle and are really sticking it to people. It feels very retaliatory,” he said, and a “complete abandonment of trying to improve the situation on the ground.”
Routes are voluntary, Ms. Overby emphasized, and the town does not have the authority to mandate them. “If we had what we needed,” she said, “we would be able to do what is necessary” as a private airport with restrictions on aircraft operations in place, “which is what we were trying to do. It would not be voluntary. We don’t have that right now.” Instead, she said, the airport “is being run by the litigants and the justice system.”
It is as if Blade Air Mobility, which allows users of its app to book seats on scheduled helicopter and airplane flights, is running the airport, Mr. Liberatore replied. “We need to close the airport. There is no compromise, there is no middle ground.”
“These pilots have gone absolutely rogue,” said Bruce-Wayne Solomon, who described having to leave his residence on Labor Day “because it was like being in a war zone.” When he sought solace at the ocean beach, the sonic assault was just as bad there, he said. “It’s horrible,” he said, adding that he too is in favor of the airport’s closure.
Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc has suggested that the town might close the airport if residents’ complaints cannot be addressed. With the temporary restraining order now in place for four months and throughout another summer of unfettered air traffic, committee members’ frustration was impossible to overstate. “It’s an absolute assault on those of us who are below them,” said Jose Arandia. “It’s an absolute outrage that we don’t have greater control over what’s going on in our area. . . . It’s already come to a head for me.” He “100 percent” supports the airport’s closure, he said.
In June, Blade Air Mobility and East End Hangars, two of the plaintiffs in the three lawsuits against the town, claimed that the town was violating the terms of the restraining order and petitioned the State Supreme Court to hold it in contempt and impose daily fines. Following imposition of the order, “we talked about closure and immediately got a contempt order,” Ms. Overby said. “It is unbelievably frustrating to be sitting here and understanding that the people that are my constituents and are having a hard time, that I can’t help you.”
At Tuesday’s town board work session, she relayed more comments to her colleagues. “The worst airport situation ever,” was one. “We have all been polite in dealing with the future of the airport. It’s time to show our outrage,” was another. “This year was a horror,” was a third.” There were no dissenting voices at Saturday’s meeting, she noted.
Ms. Overby drew a distinction between “local pilots that are good pilots that fly small airplanes that are not obnoxious” and commercial operators of helicopters and jets. She referred to newspaper advertisements paid for by a group called Aviation Advocates, which she said “are playing loose with the facts” with regard to residents’ support for maintaining the airport and how it is operated. “They’ve moved everybody to a different point, which is an inflection point, to ‘let’s just close the airport,’ which is what I’m hearing today.”
Tom Ogden suggested a “civil disobedience approach,” blasting “this outrageous so-called Justice Baisley, who obviously despises the town board.” He also deemed outrageous the judge’s decisions on the 4,000-foot stretch of ocean beach on Napeague popularly known as Truck Beach, where a 2021 ruling that property owners’ deeds extend to the mean high-water mark effectively privatized the beach. Justice Baisley found the town and town trustees in criminal and civil contempt on June 30 for violating the 2021 ruling by continuing to issue beach driving permits and not doing enough to stop people from driving or parking on the section of beach. He also ordered the town and trustees to pay the plaintiffs’ costs and attorneys’ fees associated with the years-long legal battle.
Like Mr. Ogden, Mr. Arandia suggested a more confrontational approach. “I myself have seen signs in store windows that identify ‘keep the airport open,’ “ he said. “I’m not working with those retailers any longer.” But the town, as landlord of the airport, should be more aggressive in the landlord-tenant relationship, he said.
Patricia Currie, a longtime critic of the airport who lives in Noyac, was dismayed “that any human being would subject other humans beings to that” — incessant air traffic above their residences — “on a daily basis, on an hourly basis.” Given the outrage being aired at the meeting, “at this point, I’m beginning to sound tame,” she said. “I’m very sorry that this is happening to the people in East Hampton. But I think it was the only way you could ever understand why the rest of us have been screaming and yelling and pleading for change for two decades. I just ask that you continue to speak as you are today, and demonstrate your outrage in whatever way you can. Nobody can live like this.”
