24 | Helicopter noise over New York - with Stop the Chop NY/NJ

Imagine if 160 helicopters flew over your home every day. That's what many residents of New York City experience. And the noise is disrupting their sleep, parks and recreation, and even pedestrian and bicyclist safety.  Soundproofist talked with representatives from Stop the Chop NY/NJ -- an organization that's working to legislate guidelines to manage a growing number of non-essential helicopter flights over the most densely populated metropolitan area in the U.S.  Join us in an informative conversation with Stop the Chop's Melissa Elstein, Andy Rosenthal, and Adrian Benepe. 

Transcript

Cary (00:06):
This is episode 24 of Soundproofist. And my name is Cary,

Phill (00:11):
And this is Phill.

Cary (00:12):
And today we're talking with some community organizers in New York City who are standing up to some companies that fly helicopters, about 160 non-essential helicopter flights over New York City per day. And the noise from the helicopters is disrupting the lives of thousands of people who live in those flight paths. The name of the group is Stop the Chop. Let's hear what they have to say and how you can help.

Melissa (00:47):
Well, first of all, thank you for having us. We're thrilled to be here and really appreciate the opportunity to talk about what's happening regarding helicopters in the New York metropolitan area. So my name is Melissa Elstein and I'm on the new version of the Stop the Chop NYNJ board. And I'm also on the board of another community organization in our grassroots local group on the Upper West Side, West 80s Neighborhood Association. I'm a non-practicing attorney and I also teach ballet, yoga, and Qi Gong and Tai Chi Easy. So I wear lots of hats, so to speak, but today I'm wearing my Stop the Chop hat.

Andy (01:28):
OK. Andy Rosenthal. I also live on the Upper West Side and I'm a retired investment banker and Wall Street trader. And since my retirement, I've had trouble enjoying my apartment and the parks because of the helicopter noise. And so Melissa and I have known each other for many years and we're like-minded and decided to do something about it.

Adrian (01:53):
Hi, I'm Adrian Benepe. I'm currently president of Brooklyn Botanic Gardens... As the name implies, in Brooklyn. Prior to that, I worked for the Trust for Public Lands, advocating for urban parks across the nation for eight years. And before that, I worked for the New York City Parks Department for 27 years, including 11 years as New York City Parks Commissioner. And oversaw the construction of about $2 billion worth of new parks, particularly waterfront parks, which are some of the worst impacted now by this non-essential noise. So I was an early board member of Stop the Chop. It had gone kind of dormant and was revived by Melissa and Andy, who are now kind of the leadership of it. I'm still on the board and seeing both the impact on my neighborhood, where I live, also in Upper West Side on all the waterfront parks. And now in particular, seeing a really specific environmental justice issue in Brooklyn, which I can talk about.

Cary (02:44):
Great. Thank you. Yeah, that must be very painful for you to have worked so hard on building these beautiful parks. And now they're somewhat getting ruined by something you probably didn't anticipate at the time. So, I thought I'd start with having you describe what is the situation right now with the chopper noise in New York City? I've seen a lot about it on Twitter, but from your vantage point, what's going on?

Melissa (03:09):
Well, if I may start... To give a quick overview, it's a twofold problem. There are the tourists that are flying for sightseeing photographs. And those emanate from various heliports, airports, downtown Manhattan heliport at the seaport in New York City. And then from New Jersey, Carney -- which is a private airport -- some from Linden, New Jersey. And then they're also some from Westchester as well. So those are the tourists. Then we also have the problem with commuter helicopters. And that includes companies such as Blade Urban Air Mobility. And they're flying to the airports, the local airports. They're flying to the Hamptons, to other Long Island locations. Some of them are flying to DC, Baltimore, and pretty much anywhere else that's commutable. So it's a twofold problem. And the paths of these helicopters are disturbing people all over the New York metropolitan region. And we are a bi-state organization. So we do have members in Hoboken, Jersey City. Wehawken, the five boroughs, South island, West Uptown, downtown, Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island City, you name it. All the way out to the Hamptons. So the areas, even between the Hamptons and New York City, and then we have members as well being affected in Westchester. So it's a vast geographic problem that involves obviously noise pollution, but also air pollution.

Cary (04:43):
Yeah. And when you mentioned some of them are commuters, which I didn't anticipate -- did that change at all during the pandemic, the height of the pandemic? When fewer people were going to the office, did it stop a little bit? And is it increasing now?

Melissa (04:57):
Well, the tourist helicopters from New York City have slowed down. They haven't fully stopped. They did stop during the height of the pandemic. But ironically, we started seeing the tourist helicopters from New Jersey. One of the worst offenders is FlyNYON out of, I mentioned Carney Airport, the private one. They started pretty early during the pandemic recovery to the point where, you know -- you follow us on Twitter. People were wondering, how is this even allowed under social distancing guidelines? So, you know, it was at that point -- and they were one of the first to start -- I guess when we say tourism, it doesn't necessarily mean that these are out-of-state tourists. Because local people are also, it seems. Going on these helicopters and posting to social media. They're these "doors off, shoe-selfie"... the feet, the whole leg, not just the feet, the whole legs are dangling over our landmarks, over our parks. I mean, you can go and see their posts on social media. We don't like to repost it as horrifying as they are. And so they started up fairly soon as the area was trying to make a comeback from the pandemic.

Adrian (06:14):
Just to put in a little bit of context. Yes. We're seeing a big surge in use. I think there's more helicopter use -- what we call non-essential helicopter use -- now than at any time in the city's history, for sure. But I would also say that there's no city in the United States, perhaps in the world that has this level of commercial private helicopter use. I've been to all the big cities in America as part of my work for TPL. LA, San Francisco, Chicago, Houston, Dallas -- none of the large cities has anything like this problem. You can go and spend a beautiful weekend on the San Francisco waterfront and never hear a helicopter. You can't walk five minutes on a weekend in New York City without hearing helicopter. So they've absolutely destroyed what used to be quiet weekends. Today, thankfully, it's raining. And it's become so bad that many New Yorkers now pray for rainy weekends, cause we know we won't hear the helicopters. I haven't heard any helicopters because it's kind of low overcast, heavy rain. And that's really sad -- that instead of a beautiful fall day, we pray for rain.

Cary (07:12):
Wow. That's incredible.

Melissa (07:14):
It's so true.

Andy (07:15):
Can I frame it a little bit and give you some numbers behind this? I think that would be helpful for you and your audience can to out their calculators and sort of start to figure out how frequent these are. And numbers are not easy to come by. So I'm gonna use at least pre-COVID 2019 numbers and... At least that I have some FAA data on. So if you go back to pre-COVID times, and I don't think we're radically off from that anymore, you would have ... well, maybe we're higher in some ways. We're certainly higher in people flying over land, which they haven't really been doing as much since 2016...but pre-COVID 2019, we had roughly 30,000 tourist flights out of the downtown heliport, which is the only heliport of the three New York City heliports that allows what they call tourist flights. So 30,000. That's 30,000 takeoffs, 30,000 landings, or 60,000 operations per annum. If you look at where the heliport is...

Melissa (08:16):
I think we're higher. I think we're actually higher.

Andy (08:19):
Yeah. And you know, and that's mostly concentrated, I would say or more concentrated. It runs year-round, 12 months. But there's more in the summer and our nice days. And so, when you start to think about when you're going out to enjoy Governor's Island or go to school at the Harbor School, what kind of impact that has on those places. In addition to that, again, going back to the pre-COVID era we had -- I'm gonna use very rough terms -- about 15,000 flights out of the East 34th Street heliport, which is the other New York City-owned heliport. And about the same number coming out of -- very roughly -- out of the West Side heliport, West 30th teleport, which is located in the Hudson River park. So that's kind of the environment pre-COVID. And things, have shifted around, but the plague has not gotten any better. But you know, if you start figuring how many that is, it's very frequent that I'll pull out my airplane tracking app ....

Andy (09:18):
...which everybody should use if they care about this issue. We recommend something called FlightRadar24. It has a free version, which is totally adequate for what you need to do to see what it is. And I often pull that up, and I'll see 8, 9, 10 helicopters, not including also few small planes in what I would call the Manhattan airspace. So Manhattan and adjacent waterways. So if you think about, at one moment, there'll be 10 helicopters. Often five of them let's say up near Central Park or on the adjacent rivers, East and West. And another sort of five floating around, usually down around the Brooklyn Bridge and out to the Statue of Liberty and Governor's Island area. But very easy to use FlightRadar24. There's a big misconception out there. And I see it every day. I was out talking to people this week in Central Park, there was a movie festival in Central Park this week and talking to people as they were entering. There were of course helicopters hovering over Central Park. And people said, "isn't that police?" And I'm like," no." There are police helicopters that fly New York City. And there were quite a few of them during the protests at their peak, but 95 -- and I'm making that number up, it's not scientific -- but I would say 95 to 98% of these are non-essential.

Melissa (10:34):
And by the way, the numbers that Andy cited, he didn't mention anything also about the helicopters that are leaving from New Jersey heliports.

Cary (10:46):
Right. Linden you said, right?

Melissa (10:49):
Well, there's Linden, there's Carney. There's also the airports, right where you have right. The commuters going from JFK, Newark, LaGuardia...

Andy (10:59):
Teterborough.

Melissa (11:01):
Yeah. To a certain extent. Also there's the Westchester County Airport that now has the relationship with Blade. So that wasn't even factored in the numbers that he gave you, nor if they're coming from other airports as well, or heliports. So as you can see in your mind's eye, right? You have this little area. And I think first of all, it's outrageous that a tiny island like Manhattan has three heliports all south of the thirties south ...three? On this very short area of land. We also are, you know, having them come from across the river.

Melissa (11:42):
So, you know, we do show a lot of the screenshots of FlightRadar24 on our Twitter feed. And you can see how many of those little helicopter icons are simultaneously flying up the Hudson River, which has become the helicopter highway. As well as over the parks. As Adrian had mentioned, and Central Park, where many of us who live on the Upper West Side and like to recreate, you can't even jog around the reservoir, the Jackie O reservoir anymore, because it sounds like a war zone. In fact, that is what brought me into the cause in the first place, because I am a jogger and I was so disturbed and did think -- like Andy was saying -- initially that it was the NYPD searching for a missing person. <laugh> until I started asking around. It's made the parks just unusable.

Andy (12:32):
Let me just finish up on my numbers if I can, Cary. So let's take the pre-COVID numbers. And this is a number that's been growing and Blade hopes to quadruple their business over the next couple of years. So this is not a stable problem or a preexisting problem for, you know, forever and ever. This is a growing crisis: 60,000 flights, which is what we have. And that would be 120,000 operations, right? Takeoff and landings. If we spread that out evenly -- and it's clearly not spread out evenly, as Adrian pointed out -- there's very little to no traffic today because of the weather. But that's, you know, 1100 plus a week, 164 per day, 13 per hour. If we assume 12 hours a day, that's every couple of minutes, there's a helicopter taking off and landing in New York. OK. Many of which end up hovering over our landmarks and public places.

Cary (13:25):
And homes.

Andy (13:27):
And homes. Right. Right. Now, just to try and sort of frame this with some data. Right. That's where we were in 2019, and it's getting worse.

Cary (13:37):
One of the things I'm thinking is also with multiple helicopters in the air -- and more or less the same airspace --they're out of phase. They're not just noisy, but the chopper blades are out of phase, probably amplifying this noise horrendously because you've got one chopper over here and you've also got the distance of how sound travels you're able to hear more than one helicopter at a time from any given point in the city, it sounds like. In Manhattan. And just one is bad enough, but two of them in different locations with those chopper blades going out of phase. No wonder why you say it sounds like a war zone.

Adrian (14:16):
Let me tell you a little bit about that. From the Brooklyn perspective, I go to work every day at Brooklyn Botanic Garden, which at one point was this lovely oasis right next to Prospect Park in the middle of Brooklyn. Brooklyn has two and a half million residents. If it were its own city, it would be the third or fourth largest city in America, very densely populated. A lot of the population is poor people of color. There were two primary commuter helicopter routes that go across Brooklyn. One goes sort of east-west from Manhattan to JFK following a street that's called Eastern Parkway, an old street designed by Frederick Law Olmstead. And the other comes also from Manhattan to go to the Hamptons. And it goes all the way through Brooklyn from the north end to the south and down Flatbush Avenue, which is another major avenue. That avenue, interesting...

Adrian (14:59):
And that route is known by the FAA as "the parks route." Isn't that sweet. They call it the parks route, because it passes over Brooklyn Bridge Park, Prospect Park, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Brooklyn's largest park, Marine Park. Floyd Bennett Field which is, part of Gateway, Jamaica...Gateway National Recreation Area across Jamaica Bay. And just for added measure, goes over Ries Beach at about 200 feet. So they fly very, very low. In Manhattan, they're flying normally around 1200 feet, but they come much lower in Brooklyn. They fly below 800 feet between 400, 800 feet allegedly because they have to stay below the landing airplanes coming into LaGuardia. So we we're blessed with those two forms of noise every three minutes, a plane landing at LaGuardia and then the helicopters flying much lower. And the phenomena I've noticed is you can have two at once. One heading for the Hamptons and one heading for JFK, they're flying at about 600 feet, say the Sikorskys....

Adrian (15:48):
These are extremely loud. They're twin-engine planes. And what you first hear is the echo of the Sikorsky from the apartment buildings facing the garden, and then you hear this thing blasting over you. We have an old building that we work in, the windows rattle in their casements when these Sikorskys fly overhead. So that's bad. It's really bad that our oases are being destroyed by these machines. Even worse, they're flying over some very poor neighborhoods of color, and there's been no environmental impact done on either the noise or the exhaust from the aviation fuel that's dropping every few minutes on people's heads and going into people's lungs. The lack of an environmental impact statement on these new routes could be a big Achilles heel among other Achilles heel for this terrible industry.

Cary (16:29):
Sounds like ... right now, it sounds very unregulated.

Adrian (16:32):
It's a wild west. Yeah.

Andy (16:36):
So let's talk a little bit about regulations. Because I think that's important for people to understand. That in 1990, the federal government made it near-impossible for localities to control in any way, shape, or form their airspace. And while there may be reasons for that... right? You don't want to have someplace in Iowa telling a flight from New York to LA, they can't fly over their town. So there's sort of a rationale for it, but when you come to a place like New York City and see what the result is, there needs obviously to be some additional regulation which doesn't exist. So New York City has no power -- nor does any other municipality -- to regulate its own airspace. Once something is in the air, it's the FAA and the federal government that control, which is why we are seeking federal legislation to fix this problem. And it has been introduced. We haven't talked about it yet, but there is a bill pending in the house right now that would fix the problem. At least for New York City and surrounding areas. That's a problem. New York City does have some control over the heliports because they're on public land. And so we're also asking electeds to see what they can do, which we believe is a lot <laugh> they could close the three New York heliports, if they so choose.

Melissa (17:49):
To clarify, there's two city heliports: the East 34th Street. And then the South Street Seaport one, which is DMH -- downtown Manhattan heliport. And the other one that we had also mentioned before is in the Hudson River Park. So that's a state-owned piece of land. You know, there are movements in that neighborhood and with the community board there to close that and to remove the heliport from this park, which is also next to a sailing club, close to the Chelsea piers. It's now, you know, also a very residential neighborhood. There's the bike lane, there's a Henry Hudson highway. So there's a movement to close that.

Andy (18:26):
It's not just a bike lane. It's the busiest bikeway in the country runs inches from this heliport, the West 30th heliport is inches from actively operating helicopters. In fact, so close that we're aware of at least three lawsuits that have resulted from people being physically blown off of their bicycles while on the bike path. There's a lawsuit currently in the works, as far as we know, an 80-something year old woman broke ribs being blown off from the downdraft of a helicopter.

Melissa (18:55):
I think the other two settled.

Andy (18:58):
There's also the danger that they put their parking lot -- the access to the parking lot -- is across the bike path. And we've known from history, that's not a very safe situation. You know, several people have been killed on the bike path by people entering and exiting other businesses that were located along the other side of the bike path.

Melissa (19:17):
Yeah. And just so you know, for your listeners who maybe have not been in New York City or driven down the highway or been on that bike path, it's also people use it for walking and running and roller blading -- it's very active. There's, you know, Adrian can tell you more, being former parks commissioner, but there's parks now along the whole length of the river. So this is, you know...and there's a new park, a little island as well, that's right south of it. So, I mean, this is an area where people in Midtown really only have as their park it's on the waterfront. And like I said, it's a helicopter highway. And that includes the ones taking off and landing from West 30th, but also all the other helicopters that are headed north. And then also South use that highway, the helicopter highway. So you're having the tourists that go up and down, you have the commuters... And then you have the ones that are landing and departing at West 30th Street.

Adrian (20:14):
To put this in sort of a national context. You know, if we think back to the 1950s, we were kind of told that the future for how we live and how we work was gonna be living in suburbs and driving into cities, right? So we allowed a huge network of interstate highways to be blasted through the hearts of our cities, which has resulted in the destruction of many downtowns and many beautiful residential neighborhoods. I would say that what's happening with helicopters now is like the 1950s with highways. It is the wild west out there. The helicopter industry sees this a great opportunity here to take advantage of the fact that there's terrible traffic that people can't resolve and to create opportunities for the one 10th of 1% to literally lord it over everybody else. "You don't have to be in your limo, stuck in traffic, where you can be in an $800 flight to the Hamptons." So it is the ultimate, I would say. So it's both a combination of environmental injustice and environmental racism. Because this is very, very wealthy people, enjoying a convenience at the expense of millions of other people, middle class working class, and poor people. So this is a tale of truly a tale of two cities -- the ultra-rich and the very poor. And it's the ultra-rich who are literally dumping their noise and air pollution on the poor people.

Phill (21:28):
I would also like to add about your comment about the interstate highways being built often, those -- in many cities I've lived in Oakland, New Orleans, other cities -- I'm sure it's the same. That those interstate highways were built in thriving neighborhoods, like you said, often thriving cultural centers of people of color's neighborhoods. Exactly. Specifically, just to say the same point.

Adrian (21:49):
And that's these helicopter routes in Brooklyn are going through historically black neighborhoods that are thriving cultural places. And I think that a possible path to getting a larger consensus among elected officials is helping people to become aware that these helicopters, they're not police. They're not HUS helicopters. They're not medivac. This is wealthy people flying for convenience. And I think what once that message gets through, we may see more elected officials taking up the mantle.

Melissa (22:12):
And Andy had mentioned that bill. So it is one of a couple of pending federal bills in Congress. And it's HR 1643, the Improving Helicopter Safety Act of 2021, first introduced in 2019 after there was a fatal crash in the center of Manhattan. That was a chartered commuter flight where the pilot crashed and died. A whole building, the Equitable building in Midtown, was evacuated. And right after that, the first iteration is pretty much the same was introduced by Congress members, Maloney, Nadler, and Velazquez. And we've had a couple more co-sponsors. And then, Andy also mentioned that 1990 law. So that's the ANCA law that basically preempts any kind of very local legislation attempt to control for noise pollution, and specifically makes this a national issue. So there's another bill that's on our website. So all the legislation, anything that's pertinent generally can be looked at on our website and the legislation tab.

Melissa (23:16):
And that's 389 introduced by Hawaiian Congressmember Case, plus Jerry Nadler from New York. And if you look at that, bill, it's very interesting as well, because it does specifically -- and I'll talk about 1643 in a minute -- but specifically also grants local municipalities the power to regulate. So it's basically a response to the 1990 ANCA law, as well as banning helicopter flights over national parks and national cemeteries, wilderness areas. Because you know, they're having problems in many of these beautiful national parks with tourist helicopters as well. And then with 1643 and our petition on our website can link to it. Our petition is based mostly on 1643, in that we're trying to ban the non-essential helicopters, tourists commuters over the New York metropolitan area and 1643 does that does not specifically say New York city, but it says they would be banned over cities of 8 million people. So that really is only applicable to New York city. And as Adrian had mentioned, this city has helicopter traffic like no other. Hence the necessary introduction of the bill and we need and must get that bill passed.

Cary (24:29):
What I was wondering about was -- and I think we'll probably get to it anyway -- but with the decibel measurements and the noise measurements. Like I'm sure these are being tracked. It's difficult to do with such low frequency noise. But I am curious to know some numbers about that as well, taken from the vantage point of the ground.

Adrian (24:45):
I would say the science is poor. First of all, we have no ability to do that. To be clear, we are a volunteer organization with an accent on volunteer. We have no paid staff. We've been raising a little bit of money. We don't have any lobbyists. We don't have any scientists working for us. There may be some science being done here, but we don't have any of that information. There is a professor at NYU. We're hoping to be able to do some here. There are some noise people who are working on this issue generally of noise in New York City. <laugh> so there's lot, all kinds of noise. New York City is a very noisy city. It's become much noisier because of the helicopters. So we used to have quiet Sundays. That's no longer the case. Weekends used to be relatively quiet, no longer the case. They even fly at night.

Adrian (25:24):
So the science on both ends -- that is the noise science and the pollution science. You may be aware of the fight in Los Angeles against a sort of suburban airport might be the Burbank Airport where the NextGen technology was bringing many, many flights very low over residential neighborhoods. And they launched an environmental lawsuit saying, "Hey, you're dumping some pretty noxious stuff on our poor. And the scientists went out and scraped the pollution droplets off leaves and showed that. In fact there was a big problem with the jet fuel, the aviation fuel landing in people's neighborhoods. I believe the airport was shut down because of the failure of the FAA to do an environmental impact statement over introducing NextGen technology. So I think we're very much at the dawn of both the science of the noise and the science of the air pollution and measuring the carbon footprints of each. Think about the carbon footprints of a private helicopter flying people from New York City to Hamptons. You could drive a semi, you could drive a giant truck and have a smaller carbon footprint.

Andy (26:21):
It's not even close. The semi would be way more efficient. The general commuter flights out there very frequently will take a Sikorsky, which Adrian had mentioned earlier that uses 90 gallons of jet fuel one way from Manhattan to East Hampton. So that's the dominant route. OK. 90 gallons, that traffic is pretty much a one-way route, meaning at the end of the week, Thursday, Friday, people head out to the Hamptons and then Sunday, Monday they come back. So those helicopters that go out on Friday night are coming back empty to pick up another person or persons and then do it again. So it's roughly 180 gallons to get one or a small number of people, one way, out to the Hamptons and then double that. Right. So, you know, it could be 360 gallons for a weekend in the Hamptons of jet fuel.

Cary (27:12):
That's insane. And, and you said it's an $800 trip one way, approximately. I mean that is a different matter, but...

Andy (27:21):
Or more or more actually. If you're going by yourself, I think the $800 is with a commuter pass.

Cary (27:27):
It's the whole flight. Not per seat.

Adrian (27:31):
$800 is the cost of a one-way flight to the Hamptons, as far as I know. Or more.

Andy (27:35):
Yeah, I think that's right. If you have a pass and you share it. Again, these services set up sort of these ticket books and you can share a helicopter with somebody. Because there were quite a few people going back and forth -- even midweek -- during the depths of the pandemic. So I think it's more than that, Adrian, even if you're just chartering your own helicopter.

Adrian (27:53):
Yeah. That was the number I heard. And interesting news is that we are not fighting this fight completely alone. We were very outgunned. It's definitely David against Goliath. Goliath is these giant helicopter industry with the mega investors and paid lobbyists are busy delivering the equivalent of cash bribes to politicians here. But there is interestingly <laugh> because the Hamptons have many wealthy people. There are a number of wealthy people who are not happy about the helicopter and private jet situation. And they have instituted their own battle in East Hampton. And because they were told by the FAA, you can't simply end helicopter traffic. That's not allowed in FAA rules. They said, "okay, in that case, we'll close the airport." So there is a actively being considered now by the East Hampton town council closing the airport to end this problem.

Cary (28:36):
That's what I was thinking is the helicopter has to land somewhere, and it's landing in the "quiet place," the formerly quiet place. And that's when you start to, then ...the people... it has to impact them too. And so yeah, Hamptons is sort of similar I think to Marin County, here in the Bay Area. If we suddenly were flying helicopters, a hundred helicopters a day. Or it wouldn't be a hundred, I guess. That's really more the tourist helicopters. But if we were flying even a dozen helicopters a day into Marin County, I think those people would start to complain. So they need to get involved.

Adrian (29:13):
On that point. I believe that we're a bit of a bellwether or canary in the coal mine. I listen to KQED on weekends, because I need to catch up with the news because I sleep late. And I hear advertisements on KQED for Butterfly Helicopter tours in Marin County. So it's coming, it's coming. They will be flying from Marin to San Francisco. It's just a matter of time. So I would be very careful about that. I've heard these advertisers about the so-called Butterfly Tours of Sonoma County or Marin County. So it's coming to you. This beautiful bay will soon be spoiled by helicopters unless you nip it in the bud. Now, fortunately its got pretty fairly progressive politics all around the bay and you could probably do it as a region to stop it from becoming what it is here.

Cary (29:52):
Well, you know, we were the first test case probably for all the Ubers and Lyfts also. And we didn't do very well with that. And this is kind of an Uber or Lyft in the sky, basically. Then we were also probably ground zero for all those little throwaway... little scooter things that were left all over the city streets a few years ago. You know, you just ride it somewhere, the battery runs out, you just leave it on the sidewalk. And they were everywhere. And now what have on the streets is congestion caused by these Waymo cars that are Google cars, self-driving cars that are being trained right now. And they are going to be soon just driving around aimlessly on the streets. Right now there's still a driver in them. And there's also talk of drone deliveries in the air from Amazon or whatever.

Cary (30:42):
So these things, all of these different things -- none of them involving public transit or quiet streets -- are all happening and they're not necessarily changing for the better. And I think, yes, we are going to get what you have soon enough because it's a very lucrative industry. If you think about how much money they're making from every single flight, these tourist flights. Also, I looked up the price of a seat on one of these helicopters. It was something like the cheapest seat was like over $200. So people are willing to pay a lot of money to do this for like 40 minutes or something like that. Not even 40 minutes.

Andy (31:19):
In New York, it's cheaper and shorter. So you can get a flight for a little over a hundred bucks, a 15-minute flight out of Carney, New Jersey, which will get you to Central Park and back effectively, to annoy the people there. But, you can do it if you get a Groupon coupon or something, which are readily available for less than $150. So that it is affordable, the tourist flights. Not the commuters. The commuters generally cost more. But some of those doors-off flights that Melissa mentioned are not super, super expensive. And it can be "date night," you know, for Friday or Saturday night. "Come and hover over Central Park and get your picture of your shoes."

Adrian (31:56):
In terms of the noise -- even though we don't have meter readings -- and we hope to have those soon, because we're hoping to have some devices placed around New York City in various places. You know, I think it's important to talk about the impact on the quality of life. We will have measurements for it, but the non-measurable way that our lives have essentially been destroyed. Because in New York City, as with San Francisco and other densely populated cities, we all live in small apartments. Most of us, we don't have backyards. The streets and parks are our backyards. That's where we go to recreate, where we go to have dinners and picnics and "Sweet 16" parties and all the different things happen outside. Yeah. It's not purely quiet, but they used to be pretty quiet. Central Park -- you could go in there and hear the birds. You can't hear the birds anymore.

Adrian (32:37):
It's really... there's a tragic loss. And the things like Shakespeare in the Park, the outdoor theater is being ruined, the concerts in the parks and the New York Philharmonic by helicopters, circling over them. It's not just that they're uncaring. It's demonic, it's evil. They know what they're doing and they keep doing it. It is truly evil. This is a greedy, venal industry that doesn't give a heck. And I don't want to use the word "heck," but I will just be polite. They don't care. They are exploiting the airspace. They're killing us. The stress from the noise, the physical and mental health, the environmental health... and they just don't care. It's a greedy venal, awful industry. And why our elected officials -- who are generally pretty progressive --haven't caught up to this. We're not being well served by our elected officials.

Melissa (33:22):
With regard to some of the tourist flights as well, especially the FlyNYON from Carney. The NTSB issued a report to the FAA with those type of doors-off flights. So we have many articles on our website by Vertical Magazine that documents this. That they are flying under a specific part of the regulations that are supposed to be for professional photographers, for firefighters, etcetera. And yet they've been allowed to fly under this loophole. So they should be flying under a stricter standard, but for years now...so FlyNYON and Blade are relatively new in the scheme of things, right? They started forming after there was a 2016 agreement with Mayor DeBlasio and the industry pertaining to the downtown heliport. So we're talking about 2016 and on. So this is relatively new in the scheme of New York City noise pollution.

Melissa (34:23):
And we don't understand why the FAA has not acted. Even given that the NTSB has said, "Hey, you need to close these loopholes" or go after these companies that are taking advantage of it. It's quite outrageous. I mean, can you imagine? That we have over our buildings, our parks, our homes, our businesses, our landmarks like Statue of Liberty and Empire State Building, literally low-flying helicopters and some are definitely lower than a thousand feet. We're tracking them on FlightRadar and people's feet are dangling. Things can fall out. And this is happening over New York City? It doesn't, they're not...

Cary (35:03):
A city that 20 years ago had one of the most horrendous airborne terrorist events that people are still traumatized over.

Adrian (35:13):
That's an interesting thing you bring up here. We haven't talked about it, because we don't wanna sound too alarmist. But as you can imagine, if you're running dozens and dozens of tourist flights a day, the security probably isn't that tight. I doubt they're going through megatometers. There's no TSA there. Leaving aside that, which is, you know, hopefully unlikely... The more they fly, the more likely it is that one of these things will go down like Kobe Bryant's helicopter went down. If they crash flying that Brooklyn route, they're going into a school, a hospital, a building, or a playground.

Andy (35:42):
Let me pick up on that thread Adrian. So two things. One is... We have video of helicopters flying right over elementary schools that are adjacent to the Brooklyn Bridge with rooftop playgrounds, with children, playing on the rooftops and the helicopters circling overhead. So that is not a farfetched event. We also know that roughly every two years, we've had a significant, generally a fatal crash in the New York City area of one of these non-essential helicopters, right? We've had a helicopter hit an airplane over the Hudson River. Everybody died. We had the company that's currently flying from New Jersey for the most part, crash-land in the East River, flip over, and kill five young people who couldn't get out. We had the crash on the Equitable Building that was mentioned earlier two years ago, we had the PanAm building in the seventies. So this is ...and I could go on and on and on.

Andy (36:36):
This is not an irrelevant .... This is something that's actually a probable event. It's just a question of when in probability. Let me also follow up on the terrorism aspect. After 9-11, there was an anti-terrorism bill in 2003. And in that bill, Disney World got protection. There is currently a three-mile, no-fly zone around Disney World for anti-terrorism reasons today. So... New York City, the epicenter of terrorism activity -- at least in the United States -- has no protection of its airspace. And yet Disney World has a three-mile, no-fly zone. What is wrong with that? All we want in New York -- all 1643 is -- is we want the same protection that Disney World got.

Cary (37:26):
Wow. I didn't know that.

Adrian (37:29):
I mean, it's like you can't make this stuff up, right?

Andy (37:33):
I wanna let that settle in a little bit. And let me, we haven't really focused on health issues. So at least I wanna bring these up because this is not insignificant, and people don't realize it, but you know, the first and easiest to realize, is lead. Most of these are not using leaded fuel, but there is a subset. And I don't know what percentage is. I'll call it five to 10%, or 5% helicopters, tourist helicopters -- not the commuters -- are using leaded fuel today. I thought before I started this helicopter effort that leaded fuel had been banned from this country. But in fact, that's not true. And in fact, lead levels can be significant around some of these airports. The Santa Clara Airport in California is I think about to be closed, in large part because they tested the blood levels of children living around it.

Andy (38:20):
And they had levels of lead above the levels that children in Flint, Michigan had. So you can Google this, the Santa Clara Airport...get the academic... They were very extensive testing blood. They even looked upwind downwind... The children living downwind had more lead in their blood than the children living upwind, etcetera, etcetera. But so there is, you know, these helicopters, the Robinson 2244s are flying right over Central Park and everywhere else -- 'cause there's no regulation -- spraying lead today. Okay? So that's one health. The other health impact...and this, we have some academic studies on our website, if you go to the health section, is blood pressure. You know, when you're sleeping and there's a loud noise in your bedroom, you'll wake up because your brain never fully shuts off. You're always on alert. That fight-or-flight system is always operating.

Andy (39:08):
And when there's a helicopter coming, your body is reacting. Your blood pressure is rising, whether you realize it or not, there are things going on in the subconscious. And again, there are academic studies showing the rise in blood pressure for people that live near airports and in particular helicopter noise. So, you know, these things are not immaterial at all the health impacts. And what's the cost of that across the 10 million people in New York metropolitan area? It's not insignificant. It's hard to measure and we haven't had the money to buy, to pay for an economic study, an additional health impact. And I'll finish and let you ask, Cary... Is the cognitive. And there's plenty of studies, you know, and this really the groundbreaking study was done in New York City years ago about noise and children's cognitive ability and looking at children in schools next to railroad tracks and tracking the ones facing the tracks versus the ones on the other side of the building. And, year-to-year watching their performance, which went up and down, depending on which side of the building they were on.

Cary (40:09):
Arline Bronzaft.

Andy (40:10):
This impacts schools. I mentioned the ones by the Brooklyn Bridge, probably the most impacted school is a magnet school, the Harbor School on Governor's Island. And if you think about 30,000 operations per year in a normal year, non COVID that's 60,000. They have helicopters circling that island and that school constantly. That is not helping our children learn.

Cary (40:33):
I find it personally very psychologically disturbing to have the helicopter noise. It's so thunderous and so kind of aggressive sounding. There's no way you can really kind of relax to the sound of a helicopter hovering over you at a low altitude. It's really... and it also is a sound like an ambulance that has... it's an emotional trigger. It's a psychological trigger. "Something is wrong."

Melissa (40:58):
Correct.

Andy (40:59):
There's a reason that "Apocalypse Now" starts with that sound.

Adrian (41:04):
It's pretty remarkable. You know, I try to sleep late weekends because I get up relatively early on weekdays. And I am awakened by helicopters. I know it's like whatever ...10 o'clock because I've heard my first helicopter and it's just all day long Saturday and Sunday. So, you know, it's really, really bad <laugh> and I live, it's probably, you know, I live near the West Side and West End Avenue where blocked from Riverside Park. And the vast majority of tourist flights go right up to the Hudson River back and forth, back and forth, back and forth all day long every day., But particularly on weekends. So it's, you know, what used to be, as I mentioned before, the city of New York, particularly over the last 20 years, has built 2 billion worth of waterfront parks. As most of us saying the entire west side of New York City is basically a ribbon of park land. From the Battery all the way up to Inwood, you can get on a bicycle and ride up along a greenway. We turned abandoned piers into parks, all for a five mile stretch of Hudson River park and 800-foot pier. You get out of the end and you're away from the traffic and the ambulance and stuff. It should be pretty quiet. It used to be pretty quiet, Just you and the sound of the waves and the birds. That's been destroyed because it's now directly under "helicopter highway." So the city has spent 2 billion building, waterfront oases, which have been destroyed. And it's not that we paved paradise, we built paradise and then destroyed it.

Cary (42:25):
You mentioned also birds. And I'm wondering about the environmental impact on birds. Has it been noticeable like mass bird, death or changes in bird behavior or anything like that with all these helicopters flying so low?

Adrian (42:40):
That's a great question. I don't know the answer to it. There are bird experts that I'd like to try to consult with. That's a great question. I don't know the answer to that. I do know that <laugh>, let's put it this way. Airplanes and geese have not been friends over the years.

Andy (42:53):
Sully -- who crashed into the Hudson -- It was because of interaction with geese. We also know that Central Park — and a lot of people may not know this — is a mecca for bird watching. And because it is at the juncture of two flyways, right? For birds migrating down the east coast, they come and they see nice trees in Central Park. It's an oasis for birds. And consequently, we get hundreds of species of birds coming through every year and we're right at migration season right now. We also have the Hudson River flyway, which is a major migratory route. And there's actually a group that counts raptors coming down the river. So at various days when the wind is from the right direction, you have major migratory or route of birds. There's actually endangered species. I know that Peregrine Falcon and Bald Eagle are nesting right across from Manhattan on the Jersey side and the Palisades.

Adrian (43:47):
So these birds are in this new flight path. So we never used to have helicopters flying so frequently and they fly at roughly the same altitude. A hunting eagle will fly at about the same altitude as the helicopter. So I think one can assume that this is a danger to the birds in this area. We don't have numbers. And we'd like to check in with New York City Audobon. Because obviously be good allies in this, in case we have evidence that helicopters are striking birds.

Phill (44:11):
Well, we can assume even beyond the helicopters striking birds in flight is... we already talked about the emissions from the fuel, but you said anecdotally that you can't hear the birds in Central Park. So if the humans can't hear the birds, the birds aren't gonna be able to communicate with each other and that's going to impact their behavior as well. We can assume that to the extent to which I think is the scientific study. I do have some real quick questions for you all, though. I think a common refrain that Cary and I often encounter in these kind of noise-related conversations is that "Noise doesn't bother me. That doesn't impact me. That doesn't affect me." And I think you address this to some extent, you know, when you're talking about the health effects, but I think just to underline that even if you're not conscious of this, it is still impacting your health subconsciously. Just to our listeners out there.

Melissa (45:02):
Yeah, we have studies about that on our website as well. Because we have been...we know Arline quite well. She's been very helpful and gracious with us. And we're on some other committees together. She invited Stop the Chop to join the Quiet Community's Quiet American Skies subcommittee. So I've been representing Stop the Chop on that as well as at the American Public Health Association's Noise Pollution subcommittee. So I've been attending those zooms as well. So we are putting together a really robust health section on our website. And it even affects, noise pollution affects the cardiac system and cognition for both -- as Andy mentioned -- children, but also adults. The studies are showing. And then there is a study about the unique sound of the helicopter. As you mentioned , Cary, the unique sound is low vibration and that "rump rump rump," that inconsistent, has a particular effect on the nervous system of humans, whether they realize it or not. It creates this alarm within the nervous system. So yes, to Phillip's point, we have that on our website as well.

Phill (46:14):
I just might anticipate one question. If this does get to bigger news, I could imagine a talking head saying, "oh, this is draconian overreach and regulation of businesses. This is gonna impact profits. This is... fighting, this is basically... this is bad for business." You know, that is a critique you might encounter. So what would be a response to such a criticism?

Melissa (46:36):
What are the costs? What are the costs of the externalities of this industry? Every time there's a crash? How much does it cost for the city to employ EMS or evacuating that building or the fire department. And what's the environmental cost? How many health visits to the hospitals are being caused by the noise pollution and the environmental pollution? I mean, right now this industry is ...we're talking about the helicopter industry. Not even the jets, they're barely regulated. There's never been a cost/benefit analysis. There's been no environmental impact. We're bearing the costs on our health. On what about the loss of the ability to use our apartments? People can't even use their backyards in Manhattan or in the boroughs. It's a taking of our property to a certain extent.

Andy (47:21):
I mean, we have a number of activists who have told us "if you don't fix this, I'm moving." And which sounds kind of empty. If you go back to 2015, 16 in the former iteration of Stop the Chop, there was an activist in Jersey and he moved! OK. We have right now, one of our activists is a three-time Grammy-nominated classical musician who lives right around the corner from me here. He tries to do, he produces and directs a choir. He tries to do work at home. He says, "I can't function now because I cannot work at home and do my recording stuff with this thump, thump, thump." OK. He lives on Riverside Drive, which is adjacent to the flyways. So we had another activist who reads books for a living and she can't do her work because of the thump...thump...thump.

Melissa (48:09):
She's a voiceover [artist].

Andy (48:10):
We're not even talking about all the soft stuff. There are really hard dollars. We're talking about the Delacorte Theater where, you know, millions of dollars are spent to put on those productions. And every night that they have a production, there is helicopter traffic going over it. I mean you can -- again -- Google this, you'll find articles. The helicopter industry has recommended -- it's all optional -- that when there's a performance, please go around it. But I can tell you, I was at movie night with, I don't know how many people. Let's say a couple thousand this week. There was a movie series in the park. And they were Thursday night, this middle night. There were two tourist helicopters from New Jersey, not passing by.... HOVERING directly over doing do-si-dos over the audience. What's the cost of that. Right?

Cary (48:57):
And what time was this at night?

Andy (48:57):
This was probably... The movie started at seven. I have to look ...it was probably 7:30, 8 o'clock, which is a very popular time at sunset or just after sunset to see the city lit up. These things don't stop in daylight hours. I mean, they do run very frequently. 10 o'clock the tourist flights and the commuters go 24/7, pretty much.

Adrian (49:16):
So in answer ...also to answer your question, Phillip, in terms of a few hard numbers. And Andy may know the numbers. The New York City heliports, the two New York City heliports are owned by the city of New York, operated by something called the Economic Development Corporation. In theory, Saker Aviation pays rent to operate commercial fights there with a number of different companies. The rents each year -- maybe a few million dollars -- it's operated on what they call a concession contract. It's kinda like a hot dog cart or a restaurant in a park. These contracts are terminable at will. These contracts are not leases. There's no legal leasehold here. It's a contract that the city can terminate in the best interests. The city has spent millions and millions of dollars, at least $7 million dollars building and rebuilding the piers on which the heliports sit because they're city assets. This year, apparently the city has forgiven the payments because these 'poor' helicopters have suffered so badly over the last 15 months, they've said, "don't bother paying us that rent because you've suffered so much."

Adrian (50:13):
So in other words, the city is subsidizing this evil, right? Because they're spending money and not being reimbursed by the concessionaires, which is why we're making the case. The mayor should simply end the contracts. That wouldn't solve the problem, but it would solve a lot. Because if you can't commute into Manhattan, you've lost the convenience. Like if you fly from the Hamptons to Teterborough Airport and then have to take a car back into Manhattan, you've lost a lot of the convenience. So the mayor could end -- not everything, we can't regulate in New Jersey -- but he could end things at New York City heliports. And the city could also use its voice in the Hudson River Park Trust engine to end that, too. So we could effectively end commuter flights to and from Manhattan with the stroke of a pen. No laws needed. Stroke of a pen. Mayor says, "it's over."

Cary (50:56):
You actually are tapping into a question I was about to ask you, which is because I know we talked about how some of this is open right now because of federal regulations that you have no control over. But what I wanted to know is what are concrete things that your local officials could do to help? And you just named one of them. Are there other things you can think of that local officials could do --- aside from lobby on your behalf at the federal level? What else? Can you think of anything?

Andy (51:24):
Closing the publicly owned heliports or airport would be one thing, to the extent that's possible. And again, even that's not always possible. So East Hampton tried to surgically regulate back 10 years ago and the industry got it overturned. Because the FAA is definitely not on the public side. The FAA is definitely a captured regulator, so it's very difficult. But they now are at the point where they can close the airport. So closing the three Manhattan heliports... all could be closed in very short order. They're all on virtually overnight or 30-day maximum leases. So those could be shut. That doesn't eliminate the problem, 'cause we still have other airports. You know, heliports. New Jersey, in particular, they would still be sending helicopters over. So we're looking into what can be done on a private heliport and what regulation... Maybe we could tax them out of existence or at least tax 'em to the point where it's a tolerable number of flights. We're just beginning that research again. We have no paid staff. No, in-house general counsel or regulatory experts on staff. So we're researching that as we speak.

Adrian (52:30):
I think there could be a class-action lawsuit. I think the failure to conduct environmental impact statements with the big expansion of commuter traffic, which was not anticipated in the absence of an EIS, the classic, what they call an Article 78 proceeding. Which is a lawsuit against government failing to follow due process and acting laws and government processes. I think a class-action lawsuit on environmental justice issues would do well. So we're reaching out now to environmental law clinics to talk to some environmental organizations like Earth Justice and NRDC and say, "Hey, you're looking for an environmental justice issue here in New York City?" You know, "Have we got one for you!" So they've been resistant so far, but I think once you make the case on the EJ side, we could see some very powerful groups like NRDC, Earth Justice, and maybe some of the law clinics at the local universities joining in on some class-action lawsuits, or initiating Article 78 proceedings. And elected officials could join in those, filing Amicus briefs and things like that.

Cary (53:26):
Yeah. Well, you've got 8 million people or so living in New York City and I doubt that...

Adrian (53:30):
Almost 9 million now.

Cary (53:31):
Yeah. I doubt that the majority of them are going, "I really like the sound of helicopters every day," you know?

Adrian(53:39):
I think that's the good news. Yeah. That's the good news we do have the public. The public is with us.

Cary (53:43):
Yeah.

Andy (53:44):
If democracy really worked, we wouldn't be on this call today.

Cary (53:49):
That is true. We're seeing lots of examples of how it's not working anymore, or it's being challenged. So, yeah, I'm thinking there are a number of things that you can still do. You need the right people, you need the right strategies. You're certainly doing a lot of the right things. You just need more people to help you and get the word out.

Adrian (54:07):
Honestly, for your listeners, you can go to our website and make a contribution. What we really need is the money to be able to hire lobbyists, hire lawyers, hire some full-time staff, to do the research and the advocacy work.

Cary (54:19):
OK. Are you a 501c3?

Adrian (54:22):
We are a 501c3. And people can make donations on our website via PayPal. And you can be sure that the money's gonna be spent on the cause, because there's no paid staff. Yes, yes. Hopefully there will be. We'd like to see that happen. And you know, we're hoping that allied groups -- like there are many of these parks that have very well-heeled park conservancies. These are private groups that help to run the parks and raise... in Central Park, they raise 40 or 50 million a year in private donations to run the park. Surely there are board members there whose own experience in the park is being ruined. So we're hopeful that friends of the Hudson River Park, all of these parks have a conservancy. The conservancies put together raise about 200 million dollars a year in private donations. So we think the money's there. It just has to be, they have to understand the connection between the noise that's ruining the parks they're investing so much of their own money and tax dollars in. And how they can help reverse this horrible trend.

Andy (55:16):
I mean, I was out in Central Park at the movies this week, and there was a lot of staff from the Conservancy there running around on their golf carts. And they were all very supportive. Many of them put buttons on. I had a bag of buttons that I gave out. And the staff, you know, they're out in the park all day long and they just, one after the other came up to me and said, "This is driving me nuts!" You know? So it's hard to put that into economic impact, which you asked earlier, but there's clearly an impact. And you know, it is economic. It's just hard to put a number. You're making somebody miserable all day long.But what's the value of that? And I think, council member Brad Lander said it best at one of the hearings a year or two ago. You know, what's the price of misery?

Adrian (55:57):
He's gonna be the controller who signs off on city contracts in the next election. So there's some rays of hope.

Melissa (56:04):
And this is not a Democratic/Republican issue, right? This affects everyone. I mean, we were on page two of the New York Post after there were helicopters over the first opening night of Shakespeare in the Park this summer. And that was a big deal because it was COVID the first opening night since COVID New Jersey helicopters hovering overhead plus one commuter cause I was tracking it on my flight radar and the ushers experienced it. The actors -- and this has happened for decades -- Congressman Nadler has had press conferences on the impact of the helicopters over Shakespeare in the Park, the New York Philharmonic and all the other concerts that are happening at Central Park. And now of course there's also concerts that happen down at Battery Park as well, and Hudson River Park.

Andy (56:50):
Well but this issue to me is just so shocking that this could be fixed very quickly and with really almost no economic impact. I could say positive economic impact. But let's say even to the people that might have a negative economic impact, the shareholders of Blade. And the one shareholder that I'm aware of that owns FlyNYON. I mean, there are not a lot of people employed. This is not a big industry. This is microscopic. That's actually the externalities far, far, far outweigh any positiveness, right? I mean, overnight, we're not asking... This is not gonna cost the US government a penny.

Melissa (57:25):
And I don't think because you live in a city... I mean we're in cities for the culture, for the arts, for the diversity. We're not here to be assaulted with noise. And that's why there are local noise codes. New York City has a noise code. I'm sure San Francisco does. We have 311 complaints. I think the number one topic for 311 --- which is, you know, Mayor Bloomberg implemented that -- are noise complaints. There's a new group, New York City United Against Noise, as I'm sure Arline told you. So cities are not an excuse for mindless, excessive noise.

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Cary (58:05):
I'd like to thank Melissa Elstein, Andy Rosenthal, and Adrian Benepe for joining us on Soundproofist. If you'd like to help them stop this unnecessary helicopter noise over people's homes and over city parks, please make a donation through their website, which is at stopthechopninj.org. As always, thanks for listening and thanks for caring about acoustics and noise. See you next time.