Dear Editor:
For a couple of years now, my wife, who stays at home during the day is getting extremely frustrated, stressful and furious over the non-stop helicopter noise every day, weekdays and weekends.
Seven years ago, when we were looking for a place to buy, we definitely excluded Brooklyn waterfront neighborhoods such as Brooklyn Heights, DUMBO and Williamsburg because of the annoying helicopter traffic above there.
We found a haven in the north east part of Hoboken, only to find out after several years that the helicopters have followed us, migrating from the East River to the Hudson.
While our local politicians were busy meeting with developers in diners, quick NYC politicians were able to dump this problem on us. I recently wrote letters of complaints to the Mayor and to Beth Mason of the 2nd ward. The former resulted in a dry generic reply from a staffer telling me that the city has no power over this matter, while the latter got no response.
We visited the Williamsburg waterfront last weekend and the contrast is very obvious: Clean sky with no helicopters. Three hundred jobs in the helicopter tour industry and an annual income to NYC (that we in NJ don’t benefit from), are not an excuse to disrupt the lives of so many thousands of residents, and it is ridiculous to claim that this attraction is the lifeblood of NYC tourism.
This issue absolutely requires an immediate action and full commitment from our local politicians and we all have to remember and remind them that November is election time.
Dan Eshel