With my Nassau County district facing increases in airplane traffic due to changes in flight patterns at JFK and LaGuardia airports, I voted against an FAA funding bill in Congress Friday because it fails to combat the noise and pollution that seem to be growing and adversely affecting Long Island’s communities.

The FAA bill does not require a formal environmental review called an “environmental impact statement” (EIS), considered to be the most thorough way to examine both noise and air pollution. An EIS regarding the new “Next-Gen” system put in place under the FAA bill would help enormously in determining how much and to what extent Long Island would be affected under the new system.

For me, the bill’s lack of an EIS requirement, as well as provisions that make it harder for aviation and railroad workers to unionize, were enough to warrant my opposition to the bill.

I admire the enormous efforts of the professionals in our aviation and railroad systems and am deeply concerned about noise and pollution in my district. I refuse to support a bill that weakens these workers’ labor rights, and I refuse to look past the notion that my constituents have been suffering ever-increasing amounts of noise and pollution due to traffic changes at JFK and LaGuardia. Nothing short of a full and formal environmental review of the NextGen system will do. I will continue to fight for something simple: making sure that we’re doing everything possible to protect the health and safety of both our transportation workers and the people living in communities around our local airports.

I also recently called upon the FAA and Port Authority to work together to create a joint toll-free hotline that they would use to address airplane noise heard by residents of Nassau County.

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

I also introduced the Noise Reduction Act, which would have provided a tax credit for the installment of noise abatement technologies for individuals who wish to soundproof their homes.