Con­cerned about the neg­a­tive impacts of the noise and pol­lu­tion caused by heli­copter trav­el in and around New York City, a Brook­lyn coun­cil mem­ber is demand­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion into the pros and cons of allow­ing so much heli­copter traf­fic in the city’s air­space. “Coun­cil Mem­ber Brad Lan­der put in a pre­lim­i­nary leg­isla­tive request for such a “ ‘cost-ben­e­fit’ study after the leg­is­la­ture’s Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment Com­mit­tee took up a bill this week to con­sid­er lim­it­ing heli­copter com­pa­nies’ use of city-owned heli­ports to slight­ly low­er-noise vehi­cles.” Gersh Kuntz­man reports that accord­ing to Lan­ders, the city is putting the inter­ests of “tourists and well-heeled trav­el­ers” ahead of res­i­dents who deal with the noise on a dai­ly basis.

At a recent hear­ing, the Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment Com­mit­tee stat­ed that the heli­copter indus­try offers mea­ger rev­enue for the city, pro­vid­ing only “a few dozen jobs and $2- to $3 mil­lion per year in rev­enue.” Coun­cil Mem­ber Lan­der con­tends that “the quite sig­nif­i­cant human harm of heli­copter noise and pol­lu­tion has not been cal­cu­lat­ed.” Lan­der sug­gests a “mis­ery index” to gauge the amount of dis­rup­tion and dis­tress faced by New York­ers due to noise and pol­lu­tion. Accord­ing to the city’s 311 logs, “the num­ber of com­plaints about tourist and com­muter heli­copters rose near­ly 270 per­cent, from 840 com­plaints in 2017 to 3,094 com­plaints in 2019.”