May 15, 2001

The Honorable Andrew Spano
Westchester County Executive
900 Michaelian Office Building
148 Martine Avenue
White Plains, New York 10601

Re: County Efforts to Enforce Curfew and Resist Westchester County Airport Expansion

Dear Mr. Spano:

We are writing first to support and commend you for your proposal, recently adopted by the Board of Legislators, to close the airport parking garage from 12:30 to 5:30 a.m. FCWC strongly supports all efforts to dissuade the airlines from scheduling early morning flights that violate the voluntary curfew.

As one of the earliest opponents of Westchester County Airport's (WCA) inexorable growth and increased environmental impacts, FCWC welcomes your administration's determination, and Board of Legislators' support, to assess and limit these impacts. We want to work with you to resist FAA's relentless pressure for increased activity and expansion at the airport that would inevitably result in increased air, water and noise pollution. FAA must be forced to recognize WCA's unique environmental position due to its unfortunate placement adjacent to Kensico Reservoir. It must be made to understand the absolute necessity of safeguarding this major drinking water supply from actual and threatened water and air pollution from the airport. In addition to the stormwater drainage diversion project, other means of protection, including the establishment of a new vegetated buffer on the Kensico watershed portion of the airport, and the prevention of further expansion of the airport are essential to this goal.

To that end we advocated and strongly support the establishment of the water quality buffer area in the airport layout plan and believe that the buffer should be given legally binding status. As we stated in our letter to Gina D'Agrosa on the Draft EIS (2/14/01), FCWC believes the EIS for the plan should include a third alternative for the Air National Guard site that would avoid development of the Kensico watershed portion of the site. We urge you to work with the Board of Legislators to include in the EIS a mechanism by which all the airport land that falls within the Kensico watershed is protected from future development.

It is equally important that the County ensures the continuation of the cap on commercial flights at current levels. Airport commercial flights must not be allowed to increase further. We also encourage you to investigate ways to limit the growth of corporate flights at the airport.

We wholeheartedly support the pursuit of federal legislation to address pollution problems at WCA: namely, the effort to allow Westchester to reestablish a mandatory curfew. We have also supported and will continue to support efforts on the federal level to reestablish an Office of Noise Control at EPA; to achieve increased regulation of airports and aircraft under the Clean Air Act; and to amend the Airport Noise and Capacity Act to permit necessary local controls.

FCWC will strongly support you in these efforts and hopes you will call upon us when we can be of assistance.

Sincerely,

Edna Sussman, Carolyn Cunningham,
Executive Director Airport Committee

CC: George Latimer, Chair, Westchester County Board of Legislators
Mike Kaplowitz, Chair, Environment Committee, Westchester County Board of Legislators
Robin Marx, NRDC
Eric Goldstein, NRDC

BCC: Robert Funicello
Karen Schultz