The Brooklyn Heights Association will meet with the Economic Development Corporation tomorrow to discuss banning tourist helicopter flights over Brooklyn Heights, DUMBO and Brooklyn Bridge Park. BHA Executive Direct Judy Stanton tells the Brooklyn Paper that chopper noise is so bad that it’s hard to hold a “face to face conversation.”
Brooklyn Paper: But the BHA has an ally in Councilman David Yassky (D–Brooklyn Heights), who urged EDC not to relocate the non-essential tourist rides to the East Side heliport in the wake of August’s fatal helicopter collision in the Hudson. The anti-copter campaign is making a lot of noise, but EDC spokesman David Lombino said that the BHA is misinformed, saying that the number of flights out of the West 30th Street Heliport this year was half of what it was last year. Also, calls regarding helicopter noise to 311 have decreased, according to Nicholas Sbordone, spokesman for the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications. Then again, Community Board 6 District Manager Craig Hammerman offered one explanation for the drop-off: The operators don’t take calls about helicopter noise because such noise can’t be logged without an actual street address, he said.
