East Hampton making supreme effort in chopper war
The Town of East Hampton is taking its case to restrict access into and out of its airport by helicopters and other so called “noisy” aircraft to the highest court in the land .
On Wednesday the East Hampton Town Board announced it would petition the United States Supreme Court in hopes it will overrule a lower court’s ruling that the town had no right to impose the specific access restrictions.
After years of aviation noise complaints from East End residents, including Shelter Island, caused by commuter flights to and from Manhattan, East Hampton’s board passed legislation in April 2015 imposing a complete shut down of flights into or out of the airport from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., and banned choppers and the noisy aircraft from 8 p.m. to 9 a.m. It also passed a town law limiting noisy aircraft to a single landing and takeoff each week during the summer season.
Since then the issue has been the subject of several lawsuits. Businesses associated with the aviation industry and a helicopter pilot organization sued on restraint of trade arguments and that the town had superseded federal authority on aviation.
On November 4, the U.S. Court of Appeals (2nd Circuit) in Manhattan, voted 3-0 to reverse a lower court’s decision, and said the town had no right to impose the restrictions.
“We cannot let stand unchallenged a decision that completely federalizes our small community airport,” East Hampton Supervisor Larry Cantwell said in a statement Thursday. “[The decision] strips the town of any meaningful local control of the town-owned airport. This is an unreasonable outcome that should be overturned.”
East Hampton officials stated Thursday that they’re aware of difficulties in continuing the legal battle. “While the town acknowledges that asking for review from the Supreme Court of the United States is an uphill fight, the outcome of the Second Circuit’s decision gives [us] no choice but to undertake this endeavor,” said Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, the Town Board’s liaison to the airport, in a statement.
Supervisor Cantwell said he was organizing East End municipalities to lobby federal officials to join in an effort to gain legislative action on the issue.
On board in the long shot legal campaign is Supervisor Jim Dougherty. Characterizing East Hampton’s petition to the Supreme Court as “going to reach for the gold ring,” the supervisor said “maybe in the current emerging climate the court might toss out federal regulation and go for home rule.”
Mr. Dougherty added that he was joining in a “partnership” with other East End towns to lobby recently re-elected Congressman Lee Zeldin (R-Shirley) “to introduce and enact legislation enlarging local control of” airports owned and operated by municipalities.
