Monday, November 21, 2011

Fan is silenced by pols' money

From the Daily News:

Silence is golden for noise-addled residents of Hunters Point.

Noise abatement equipment recently placed on a large fan that exhausts fumes from a nearby subway tunnel has muffled its ear-splitting racket, according to state Sen. Michael Gianaris.

“The normal street ambient noise level is around 61 decibels,” said Gianaris, who is set to discuss the reduced noise levels at a news conference on Friday. “When the fan was operating it was around 80. Now with the muffler it’s around 62. This is a huge relief.”

MTA East River ventilator, located at 50th Ave. between 5th St. and Center St. ventilates the subway tunnel under the East River and is used during periods of construction.

Residents had complained the fan’s screeching wail led to headaches and sleepless nights.

Gianaris, along with Assemblywoman Cathy Nolan and City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer, cobbled together $700,000 in funds to pay for the noise abatement equipment.

Complaints about the noise have dropped dramatically, Gianaris said.

But he pointed out that it’s only one of the problems that has emerged as the Long Island City area continues to morph from a neighborhood of factories and warehouses to luxury apartments.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great that Gianaris and Van Bramer have lots of time for the new development residents - or should we say to provide a torrent of time and effort to ensure the developers get a handsome return by making the hipsters happy and doing everything to fill half empty units

- while for Archie and Edith they just have a few meaningless plaques and head patting photo ops while his policies are displacing them

- and their taxes (correction Crapper - its not "pols' money") are systematically diverted from their blocks to coddle the newbies.

Word on the street is that Gianaris' constituents are so clueless in expecting services that he devotes a good chunk of his time resume building with the party helping machine hacks get elected statewide rather then serving the needs of his constituents.

Politics Queens style - you can treat the locals like shit and the just get all glassy eyed and goofy when you walk into the room.

Anonymous said...

And why aren't the residents/developers paying for this??? The fan was not an issue until they KNOWINGLY moved into a industrial and utilitarian zone.

Anonymous said...

It's the same story as the case of the people who moved into apartments by the rail yards on Borden Avenue and realized afterwards that they had moved into apartments next to the rail yards on Borden Avenue. They didn't know what was nearby and the real estate agent was smart enough not to tell them about it.

Anonymous said...

Planning on holding a rally to get MTABT to put up a sound barrier wall as they expand the Whitestone Bridge 18 feet, bringing emergency vehicle noise closer to the residential community?

So far the MTABT have told the community that the new lane that will abut 18 closer to the homes will only be used as an emergency/breakdown lane. So the lights and sirens will be closer to the homes. Yeah, no added noise there. What about the morons that will drive on the lane, like on the Van Wyck, when there is a breakdown who couldn't move into the new "queit" lane.

Nora from Dutch Kills said...

Funny.

The politicians go ape shit over this - kids that just moved in - but those of us in Dutch Kills that have long suffered with hotels in our back yard get simply ignored or the press covers the comments of those responsible for our mess.

Remember that the next time Merry Mike or Smiling Jimmy or Baloney Maloney show up at your event.