A story by reporter Jon Glass in the Virginian-Pilot of Sunday, 03/28/04 -- which was thorough and well balanced -- indicated that the numbers of complaints to the Oceana noise hotline phone (433-2162) are down in years 2001-3, from levels in the year 2000.

Although the news account suggested some of the reasons for that decline, certainly the most fundamental explanation can be understood by the following recent anecdotal experience of one CCAJN Board member who lives in the Great Neck area.

That person has called the Oceana hotline many times over the past six years. After a complaint is registered, the caller does not heard back from the Navy in regard to the specific action taken on the substance of the complaint. Nor is there any indication, publicly, of what response action(s) may have been decided on. Residents who are not in regular contact with the base find that that is how their complaint calls are often handled.

Therefore, it is no wonder that residents choose to cease and desist from making these complaint calls. The anecdotal impression is that the Navy simply does not take these calls sufficiently seriously. Other CCAJNs have reported calling the Navy noise complaint hotline only to repeatedly hear a busy signal, finding it next to impossible to actually lodge their complaints.

As recently as this past Thursday and Friday, Oceana jets flew at 400-500 feet over the home of the Great Neck resident, at noise levels much louder than has often been the case. This resident, who has not been reluctant to call the Hotline [433-2162], and who has discussed these severe intrusions with Oceana officials on many occasions, chose on this particular occasion simply not to call the Hotline, for the reasons indicated above.

Incidentally, the numbers of telephone complaints released by the Navy did not include the numbers of calls made on the same day by the same resident. Consequently, the actual number of individual calls to the Hotline is much higher than what was reported.

While the lack of public follow-up by the Navy clearly contributed to the lower numbers of complaint calls, there are other factors that are directly tied to this issue. These includes the huge activity of deployment this past year to Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Middle East. The numbers of overseas long term deployments are much higher than in previous years.

Also, people can be irritated -- but yet also be restrained from complaining -- for patriotic reasons. That was very nicely portrayed in the Sunday Pilot article.

The numbers of deployments have a direct correlation to flight activity, which was obviously diminished during the Iraq war.

As for CCAJN's view on all of this, we acknowledge that the Navy has made a number of changes in base air operations designed to lower the levels of noise intrusion in the community, but we also believe that the Navy is not communicating with the public sufficiently (although the Oceana command has stepped up its direct community dialogue in recent weeks).

Therefore, we call on the Navy to do the following:

1) Release monthly or quarterly reports summarizing the major themes of complaints during each period, and indicate what actions have been taken in response to those complaints.

2) Brief members of the CCAJN Board and the public on the specific range of changes in operations that have been made to date, and on other specific potential changes being contemplated that might result in lower noise levels, consistent, of course, with Oceana's training and mission readiness requirements.

3) Open additional lines to take incoming complaints during peak operations.

Only then will the public communications effort regarding noise complaints and noise intrusion in the community be perceived as being a credible and useful procedure for the Navy.

As a footnote, we want to emphacize that CCAJN has a very good relationship with Ray Firenze, the base Community Liaison officer who is in charge in this area. But the issue is much larger than Ray's best efforts, and needs to be addressed by the base CO, and perhaps on higher levels within the Navy.
Ray also has provided us with the following information:

The phone number for the recording with the FCLP schedule for NAS Oceana and NALF Fentress and flight demo info is 433-3733. The web address is www.nasoceana.navy.mil, then click on flight ops in the menu located at the top of the page. Once there, be sure to scroll down to view both airfield schedules.

a future Study that samples resident's attitudes once the Super Hornets aircraft arrive at Oceana.