About 3 or 4 months ago, I was awoken before dawn to the sound of helicopter rotors. It wasn’t just a helicopter flying over. It was a hovering helicopter. This wasn’t the first time the event had woken me up. But this time, for some reason, I couldn’t go back to sleep. I was really pissed off about it. So I called 311. They gave me a number to the Eastern Atlantic Helicopter Association, or some crap like that. I called the number it went to voicemail. It guy on the greeting was about as articulate as a 3rd grader, not to mention the fact that If you are going to lodge a complaint, calling the industry is about the least effective method to have that complaint go anywhere besides straight into the trash. So later that day, I looked up the City website for noise complaints. The phone number for the Helicopter Noise Comission was no longer in service (I later discovered that the commission had been scrapped by Bloomberg). There was one number that worked. It was for the Helicopter Noise Coallition. I could tell by the casual way that the woman answered the phone that it was not an office that addressed this sort of thing on a full time basis. But at this point, I was happy to get anyone who would listen to me complain. She gave me a bunch of people to email and call. After this, I decided to read the NYC noise ordinance. These freaking news helicopters filming the bridge are shamelessly voilating the ordinance. Even yesterday, I went out to move the car at 7 AM and there were 2 helicopters hovering less than a half mile apart, no more than a couple hundred feet from the building tops. Not to mention that the footage they are getting is totally superfluous, being that there are probably thousands of stationary cameras already in place. Anyway, with a couple more phone calls and email, I found out that a lot of other people are kinda pissed off about it too, but it seems like there is no way for them to get organized. So I set up a website, hopefully to help identify some of the offenders and at least get some citations issued. Hopefully if all of the information needed to lodge a complaint, record infractions etc. is facilitated a little better, maybe something will be done. So here is the site http://www.helifreenyc.com/ . I haven’t really done much with it yet. But I’m going to put some form fields on there to generate on online petition to send to the borough president, as well as form emails to send to the mayor etc.. I also want to include a way for people to report violations and be able to post pictures and video of the helicopters that are offenders. Let me know if anyone has any other ideas to include (assuming that anyone reads this hahaha). Anyway, that is my rant for the day. –Jake
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One response to “Getting on my soapbox”
Wow Jake! I’d like you to come up here and tackle a few problems for me. Like the freaking burn pile on the city property outside my front window. Then maybe the guy running his construction business out of a garage across the street in my residential neighborhood. Talk about illegal noise pollution. I need to start taking pictures every time he wakes up one of my kids. I usually just open my back door and drop an effbomb right on him. Ever tried that with the helicopters? Just kidding. Good luck.