Greenwich, CT Homeowners Told To Pick Up The Phone And Complain

A sharp drop in noise complaints around Westchester County, NY airport has prompted one of the towns largest homeowners associations to tell residents to keep calling.

The airport noise abatement office received only 300 complaints in March and just 471 complaints in April. That compares with 937 and 1,230 in the same months, respectively, the previous year. John Lucarelli of the Round Hill Association says the number of calls to the airports noise is not representative of actual number of complaints. "We definitely need to keep making calls," he said at the group's meeting last week.

The Greenwich Time reports that Lucarelli, who chairs the associations airport committee, said the problems with low-flying airplanes and pilots ignoring a voluntary midnight to 0630 curfew have not abated, and that the airport needs better documentation if there is to be any change.

Westchester County airport noise abatement officer John Inserra said he welcomes the calls, but chronic complainers skew the numbers. One house in Valhall, NY accounted for 363 of the 471 complaints registered in April, and all but 25 of the complaints in March of this year.

That same household made 1,846 calls in the same two months last year.

Lucarelli told the paper that he is not looking for confrontation with the airport, but that the association is trying to "usher in a new era of public and private partnership with the community and the airport." And he admitted that, when 300 calls come from the same address, that really doesn't help the problem.

FMI: www.westchestergov.com/airport