Noise Solution: Airport to Allow Private Choppers Offshore in Southampton

This week started out with terrible news about the East Hampton Airport. An appeals court judge ruled that the temporary injunction that keeps the town’s loud aircraft ordinances at bay be made permanent. Thus helicopter chatter continues. This is on top of the Supreme Court refusing to hear their case.

But then, this morning, Donald Trump announced in a tweet he is going to spend $40 billion of the new expanded military budget on building an artificial island with an airstrip off the coast of Southampton.

“I will not allow this fishy North Korean dictator to sneak up behind us and attack our shores from the east,” he tweeted. “This beautiful new island will protect where all the wealthy in America spend their summers.”

He also announced that a new artificial island is to be built off the coast of Palm Beach where the wealthy winter. His spokesperson, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, in confirming this development, has said that yes, part of the airport will be available for domestic use.

“The president told me,” Sanders said, “he is aware of the problems at the East Hampton Airport. He certainly has dealt with these aircraft noise problems above Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach where he and other billionaires winter. He used the phrase ‘two birds with one stone,’ a rather unfortunate turn of phrase, but that’s just the president. He will go ahead with this for those two reasons, to protect the country and to help with noise abatement. Local people are among his biggest supporters.”

It is also true that billionaires contributed mightily to Trump’s campaign. And at least one billionaire, Ronald K. Coopman, says that the billionaires have been leaning on Trump to get this done. “We all are deeply moved by the plight of the local people living under the noise of aircraft coming and going here. Every time I chopper out, I pray we can get in without having to go around in circles to wait our turn for too long.”

Coopman also said that landing on this new and as yet unnamed island would be a great comfort to him and his friends.

“We will be under the wing of the greatest and mightiest military in the world,” he said. He also commented on the relatively lax security at the East Hampton Airport when he lands there. Usually it is just two policemen, he says.

Construction will begin before the ocean begins to freeze over this winter. It will involve a great deal of drilling down into the seabed to anchor the island in place. A great deal of dirt will be brought in (by ship) to be dumped as a foundation for the island. Sand and trees will be brought in. There will also be a beach on the ocean side of the island for bathers and surfers. Specially trained Navy SEALs will operate as lifeguards.

One runway will be for the military and another for the public—so neither will delay the other. In addition, the whole place will be bristling with anti-missile missiles so that any incoming Korean nuclear weapons will be exploded harmlessly offshore, well out from both Southampton and the new island.

High-speed ferryboats will take civilian passengers arriving at the island to docks, located on the existing jetty that sticks out into the sea from alongside the Southampton Bathing Association. Onshore, there will be parking for fleets of limousines and private cars. Pick-up for passengers will be just as convenient as it has been for those who’ve been coming in via East Hampton Airport.

Military hardware, ammunition and supplies will be brought in by air. The military will use the same method as they do in the Middle East.

When the island and its runways open in 2018, a special effort will be made by the federal government to create jobs for local people, particularly local people who will have lost their jobs when the East Hampton Airport becomes a public park. In the preliminary plan for the new island, the source of power is to be coal, which is in great abundance underground in America, particularly just offshore of the Hamptons. The locals can dig for coal and operate the furnaces.

“I don’t think my friends are going to be happy about this,” said Coopman. “Particularly if the wind blows the smoke the wrong way.”