Garden City Joins TVASNAC, Little Aircraft Progress

For more than a year, the Garden City Environmental Advisory Board (EAB) has struggled against the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to reduce aircraft noise and frequency over the Garden City area. Now that the village has joined the Town-Village Aircraft Safety and Noise Abatement Committee (TVASNAC), it won't be fighting alone.

That does not mean, however, that the noise will be letting up soon. TVASNAC recently learned from the FAA that a day's worth of planes needs only to maintain an average decibel level of 65 and under. Sixty-five decibels is the rough equivalent of an air conditioner outside at 100 feet away.

Laurence Quinn, village trustee and EAB chair, said this information directly contrasts with what he believes the FAA has told him for the past year.

"We have a plane, every tenth plane, could basically make a sonic boom and as long as the average over the eight-to-twelve hours is 65 decibels, they say it's not an issue," Quinn said.

Garden City now joins neighboring villages Floral Park and Stewart Manor as TVASNAC members; the group now consists of 11 communities and costs $1,500 per year to be a member. Village representatives come together monthly to discuss plans as well as communicate with aircraft officials.

In other news, Quinn announced that the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for St. Paul's will be released in two to three weeks, but could not say whether he thinks the village will leave St. Paul's or tear it down.

"We are divided," he said. "There's two or three that always want it to stay, there's two or three that don't, and depending on what they're saying I tend to go either way, which kind of frustrates two or three of them, in terms of how you're asking the question."

Quinn added, "I don't think you have a consensus on the board of five, or four, trustees that know what we want to do or what can be done."