Residents Sound Off on Helicopter Noise

Los Alamitos and Rossmoor residents expressed mixed feelings about a proposal to relocate another Black Hawk helicopter unit to the Los Alamitos Joint Forces Base Wednesday at a community workshop on the base.

The military is looking to relocate an eight-helicopter reserve unit from Victorville to Los Alamitos, and the move could mean up to 15 additional helicopter flights per week at the base. Starting on Sunday, residents will have 30 days to comment on the proposal’s environmental assessment.

Most people at Wednesday’s workshop expressed concern about the noise impact of additional helicopters. Several said they were torn between wanting to support the troops and not wanting the troops to conduct flight training above their backyards.

Bill Shilling has lived near the base for decades and has gotten used to the noise.

“More helicopters will mean more noise and more helicopter exhaust. I wouldn’t vote to bring them here, but if they do end up here, I will tolerate them,” said Shilling. “With the military, you like to think you are tolerating it for a nobler cause.”

The new helicopters would follow the base’s existing flight patterns, which are designed to minimize the noise impact on the community, said Sara Jackson, environmental program manager for Verando Group, the military’s environmental consultant on the project.

“I think people probably won’t notice the difference because of the established flight patterns,” said Jackson. “Fifteen additional flights aren’t that many.”

However, 15 additional flights is a lot to Virginia Bickford, who has lived next to the base for 16 years.

“They swing right by my back fence, and you can’t even hear yourself think,” she said. “If we invite someone over for dinner in the backyard, we have no way of knowing if they’ll be training or whether we’ll be able to hear ourselves.”

Bickford said she opposes having an additional helicopter unit at the base. If the Base did have to add one, she’d like to see an altered flight pattern and limited schedule so that the helicopters don’t buzz by her house so often, she added.

However, that simply isn’t possible, said Lt. Col. Myles Williams, the base’s airfield commander.

“It’s just not realistic. Airports don’t operate in that manner,” said Williams. “As it is, the flight pattern is extremely tight. We keep the flight patterns pretty much in line with the confines of the installation. We do that as a measure to mitigate the impact of the noise.”

The proposed relocation would bring an 87-member Army Reserve Aviation Unit consisting of 29 full-time personnel and 58 part-time reserve soldiers and eight UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters.

According the Army, the Black Hawk Helicopter Company would perform light helicopter maintenance and conduct flight-training operations including departure and landing exercises.

Generally, the helicopters fly about 700 feet off the ground, and they do tight turns along the perimeter of the base, said Williams. Most noise complaints come from residents in the Rossmoor Highlands, Seal Beach’s College Park East and from Garden Grove, he added. When the helicopters turn along the flight path, they tilt into the turn, effectively directing their propellers and the noise toward those neighborhoods.

For the helicopters to fly higher above the homes, the flight pattern would have to extend out above the community by about a mile, said Williams.

As a pilot having been deployed to Afghanistan, Williams said he knows how important the helicopter training is to the troops. There are currently units from the base deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq, and they learned their maneuvers in Los Alamitos.

“Our noise mitigation program is not perfect, but we do the best with what we can,” he said. “I think most people want to be supportive because they know how important this is.”

The base has a noise hotline 562-795-2573 for residents to call with noise complaints. The proposal's environmental assessment will be available at the Rossmoor/Los Alamitos libraries and on at www.army-nepa.info. Residents have until April 20 to comment.