TESTIMONY
Bill Thomas, Board Member of Stop the Chop NY/NJ on Banning Non-Essential Helicopter Flights Over New York City
2:05:15
·
170 sec
Bill Thomas testifies in favor of banning non-essential helicopter flights over New York City.
- He is a board member of Stop the Chop NY/NJ, an organization seeking to ban non-essential helicopter flights in the NYC area
- He states that non-essential flights are unsafe, with 30 crashes since 1980 including a hijacking incident
- The excessive noise from helicopters increases health risks like hypertension and heart attacks
- Non-essential flights disproportionately impact environmentally overburdened communities in NYC
Bill Thomas
2:05:15
Ready?
2:05:16
Are we operating with a 2 minute time limit?
2:05:18
Just so we are.
2:05:19
Okay.
2:05:19
So I'm Bill Thomas.
2:05:20
I'm a board member of stop to top of New York, New Jersey.
2:05:24
So I have submitted to you my written testimony, so I'm not gonna cover all of it you can read it at your leisure.
2:05:30
I would like to highlight a few key points and also make some comments about some of the testimony that you've already heard today.
2:05:38
Stop to chop is the leading organization in New York City that's organized really to seek to ban, not essential helicopter flights in the New York City area, and we applaud the city council for its interest in in this same issue.
2:05:54
First, I'd like to just highlight a few of the problems, some of which have been alluded to already in the questioning with nonessential helicopter flights.
2:06:02
First of all, they're not safe.
2:06:04
Someone earlier said that we don't have any crashes in New York City.
2:06:08
Well, there have been 30 of them since 1980, including one hijacking as my friend Andy reminds me.
2:06:16
Excessive noise, increases the risk of hypertension and heart attacks and other forms of illnesses in all of us.
2:06:27
And they're an environmental justice issue.
2:06:30
There are many there are communities in New York City that have historically been disproportionately affected by all forms of pollution, and many flights fly over those very same communities.
2:06:43
So it's for these reasons that we applaud the cows as I said before, the council's interest in the in these issues.
2:06:51
Wanted to touch on a couple kind of objections or issues that you you hear in response to efforts to curtail these flights.
2:06:59
One is that all the the flights will just move to New Jersey.
2:07:02
As councilman wrestler said earlier in his questioning, that's simply not the case.
2:07:08
It's just not enough capacity, not enough willingness on the part of tourists who would otherwise be in New York City to Schlip over to New Jersey to get these flights AB, the other city, teleport, particularly the one in the west side, is already at capacity.
2:07:24
And so therefore, could not accept additional flights.
2:07:27
At this time in any event.
2:07:29
Also, charter flights won't hurt the city economy.
2:07:34
The even the helicopter's industry own flawed and outdated analysis seem to acknowledge that most of this economic activity from tourists would simply shift if we didn't have helicopter tourist flights they would shift to other forms of of tor tourism as well.
2:07:55
In fact, you heard
Amanda FarÃas
2:07:56
I'm searching 30 seconds over, so I need you to wrap.
2:08:00
We do have over a hundred people.
Bill Thomas
2:08:02
So I'm gonna turn it over to colleagues who will expand on some of the comments.
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Andrew Rosenthal, Long-Time Upper West Side Resident, on Ineffective Process for Reporting Helicopter Noise Complaints and Lack of Action by the NYC Economic Development Corporation (EDC)