Politics & Government

Seal Beach Weighs in on Black Hawk Helicopters

A proposal to add a new Black Hawk Helicopter Company to the joint forces base would impact College Park East.

Living in Seal Beach, Rossmoor and Los Alamitos means, among other things, mild weather, ocean breezes and the pulsating hum of helicopters and planes.

As residents in the three communities grapple with a proposal to add a second Black Hawk Helicopter Company to the Los Alamitos Joint Forces Training Base, that sound has been described in many ways. It’s been called piercing and deafening, and more than one resident has called it “The Sound of Freedom.”

By historic standards, the local air traffic noise has been quiet of late. The base’s current Black Hawk Company is deployed until this summer and the airplane runway has been closed for repairs. However, when the soldiers return along with the helicopters and planes, so will the noise. The public comment period on the plans to add another helicopter company to the base have given residents a chance to voice their noise complaints and support for the troops to military leaders, and it has given the base’s commander Brigadier General Keith Jones a chance to show community leaders that the base understands the community’s noise concerns.

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This week Jones briefed Seal Beach officials on the plans to add another Black Hawk Helicopter to the base after lobbying to extend the army’s public comment period from April 20 to May 5 to give residents more time to sound off.

“We appreciate the words of support – that is very gratifying, but we do understand that there are concerns,” said Jones. “We understand that the noise and the flight pattern are issues and we will continue to work on those issues.”

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Since hearing about noise concerns from Los Alamitos residents last month and from Los Alamitos City Councilwoman Gerri Graham-Mejia that base leaders have long paid lip-service to the community without truly addressing noise complaints, the general said he tested the base’s noise-complaint hotlines several times to make sure callers received an adequate response.

During the airfield’s normal business hours, callers get to speak to a live official and can leave a message after business hours, he said. Base officials will investigate to find out if any aircraft are flying out of the flight pattern and will educate them and then penalize them if the problem is chronic, said military officials.

“It would be nice if they could fly their circle patterns out over the ocean or the navy base if they’d let you,” said Seal Beach City Councilman Gary Miller, who represents the College Park East neighborhood most affect by the base helicopters.

Miller estimated that when the base’s current Black Hawk Company returns from the front and the new one joins them, the base could get 50 more flights per week then it gets today.

The four major concerns that residents have relates to noise, safety, property values and flight path violations, said Miller.

He called for an additional noise study that would allow the community to hear the Black Hawk helicopters as they conduct flights within the base’s flight pattern to get a sense of how the proposal would affect them.

Seal Beach resident Lorraine Navarro lives along Lampson Avenue and has become very familiar with helicopter noise in her 26 years in College Park East.

“I never thought I’d say that I am an expert in helicopters, but I pretty much am,” she said.

The helicopters train for about an hour at a time and fly by every three minutes, making it difficult to work in her home office, she said.

“It’s very loud and disruptive,” added Navarro. She asked military officials to reconsider their flight patterns.

However, the base’s flight pattern is tightly contained to keep the helicopters from flying over nearby houses, said airfield commanders. Any adjustments could have helicopters flying three miles further out above the community. The tight turns of the flight pattern cause the helicopters to tilt toward the community, projecting the noise outward.

According the Army, the new Black Hawk 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.

The proposal would 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. 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. The move is expected to save the Army $83,000 a month.

The base’s noise hotline is 562-795-2573, and the proposal’s environmental assessment is available at the Rossmoor Library or at www.army-nepa.info.

 


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