[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 132 (Friday, September 7, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H10311-H10312]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         FAA AIRSPACE REDESIGN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. ENGEL. Mr. Speaker, the Federal Aviation Administration has come 
up with a proposal to redesign the airspace around New York, New Jersey 
and the Pennsylvania area. Despite all the opposition and all the 
concerns of the people affected, lo and behold, the FAA made no 
significant changes in their final proposal. Full steam ahead, business 
as usual, the public be damned.
  So I stand today in strong opposition to the FAA proposal to redesign 
the airspace around New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia. 
Specifically, I am disturbed by their actions surrounding the proposal 
to route up to 600 airplanes a day over Rockland and West Chester 
Counties in New York, which I represent.
  The FAA created that proposal with zero input from the people whose 
lives would be most harmed by this proposal. In fact, even when I 
brought this up to the FAA in a meeting in my office, it took over a 
week of urging before they would even agree to attend a public forum 
that I held in Rockland.
  They also conducted this entire process over the course of several 
years without any kind of adequate notification. My constituents 
expected better and they deserved better.
  Throughout this process, we have seen, time and time again, that the 
FAA would ignore the opinions and suggestions of myself and anyone else 
who would be affected by their proposal. Valid suggestions that would 
improve this proposal were written off without serious consideration.
  The FAA is trying to push through a proposal that doesn't make sense, 
and they are refusing to accept any changes.
  But the plan itself is not my only problem. The misleading tactics 
and the stonewalling by the FAA only add to this issue. Every effort I 
and my constituents and some of my colleagues have made has been met 
with bureaucratic resistance while, at the same time, the FAA has laid 
down strict deadlines for comments and changes.

[[Page H10312]]

  Just as an example, I tried multiple times to get an answer for how 
loud it would be when an airplane flies over us. This is critical 
information since overflights will be happening up to 600 times a day. 
All the FAA would tell me were 24-hour noise averages, which tell me 
nothing. Noise averages mean nothing to us. A room could be silent for 
23 hours and have a 140-decibel rock concert for an hour, and the noise 
average would be something around a whisper. This is just one example 
of the FAA providing incomplete or misleading information.
  In addition, every document the FAA has sent to my office, from the 
original proposal to the record of decision, has been extremely 
complicated and vague. I've been living in New York my entire life, and 
I was unable to interpret the maps of where the planes would be flying 
over my district. If my staff and I, who are knowledgeable about the 
region, are unable to decipher the maps, how is the general public 
supposed to know where the airplanes will be flying over their homes? 
The answer is that they will not, and that's just what the FAA wants.
  It would be easy for the FAA to publish good maps of the area. They 
could use maps that are labeled with names of cities, streets and 
bodies of water. They could draw lines of these maps signaling 
precisely where the planes would be flying and at what altitude, but 
they chose not to do so. They chose instead to provide strangely 
colored maps with very few labels, so it was nearly impossible to 
figure out where the planes would be routed. It is this type of complex 
and misleading information that makes me and my constituents distrust 
the FAA.
  And finally, let me say the agency has deliberately manipulated 
information that it is giving out to be public. For example, my office 
sent in over 25 pages of comments from over 60 constituents. We also 
sent in a petition signed by nearly 100 local residents, and finally, 
we sent 237 pages of a transcript from a public town hall meeting I 
held in Rockland, which was attended by well over 1,000 people. Dozens 
of people spoke, not one of whom supported the plan. But the 
spokesperson for the FAA was quoted in the newspaper claiming they had 
only received five comments from affected people. Five. This is 
dishonest. This is unacceptable from an agency that is supposed to 
represent all of the people in the country.
  Mr. Speaker, when the Transportation-HUD appropriations bill came to 
the House for a vote, I strongly supported an amendment to eliminate 
funding for this airspace redesign proposal. I did this, not only to 
express my dislike for the proposal, but also to send a message to the 
FAA that they cannot treat Americans this way. And I will continue 
fighting this.
  And finally, let me say to my colleagues, this may only right now 
concern the northeast corridor, but if the FAA can get away with 
running roughshod over Members of Congress, over constituents, over 
Americans, they can do it in any region of the country. We need to 
fight this. This is wrong. If it can happen in the northeast, it will 
happen all over America. We must fight this plan, and I will continue 
to fight it.

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