McCarthy’s anti-noise pollution effort fails

An effort by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-Mineola) to get a noise-pollution study included in funding and policy legislation for the Federal Aviation Administration has failed.

McCarthy said in a statement Friday that she voted against an FAA bill that passed the U.S. House because it lacked an environmental-impact statement, which would be a study of how new departure routes for jets flying out of Kennedy Airport would affect Long Island residents.

The U.S. Senate will next consider the legislation.

In October, the FAA started the new departure routes as it gears up for NextGen, a satellite navigation system that will replace the current ground-based radar air traffic control system. The FAA has said that the new flight patterns will increase traffic over parts of Long Island, but that the planes will be at higher altitudes and therefore have minimal noise impact.

Shams Tarek, a spokesman for McCarthy, said complaints about airplane noise have increased since last summer.

“From what we’re hearing from our constituents, there is more noise from flights over the district,” Tarek said.

Last spring, McCarthy voted for an amendment to stop a new flight plan that would require westbound flights from Kennedy Airport to start by flying east over Nassau County during the noisy takeoff procedure.