Politics & Government

Helicopter Training Noise to Decrease with Resurfaced Runway, Navy Says

Flight operations shifted to a resurfaced southern runway at NOLF IB this week.

Traffic on the southern runway at Naval Outlying Landing Field Imperial Beach started again Tuesday, moving operations further away from homes just over the Landing Field's fence.

For the past six months operations were conducted from the smaller northern runway.

"26 [the northern runway] was not originally a runway. It was a parking lot, but mission requirements dictated back in the 80s that the Navy needed more runway space," said Lt. John Peters who runs air traffic control for Naval Base Coronado.

The northern and southern runways are only about 200 feet apart, but that small distance made a big difference to nearby residents.

"Part of this uptick in noise complaints that we got recently is because of the temporary shift in operations," he said.

That shift became a "lightning rod" for criticism from local residents in nearby Imperial Beach neighborhoods, Peters said.

Initial plans were to have the resurfacing finished while pilots were away during the Christmas holiday, but funding problems old clay found underneath the runway that needed to be removed slowed things down.

That delay came just as people were beginning to read an environmental assessment about a Navy proposal to increase helicopter operations and activity 30 percent by 2016.

NOLF IB is used for touch and go operations, auto rotations which simulate engine failure and practice landing on helicopter pads with markings and size similar to an aircraft carrier deck.

Some helicopters take off like a plane in order to avoid traffic jams.

"This is a training facility so we have to have some sort of traffic flow," Peters said.

About $5.6 million was spent on the runway repairs.

The original runway was built in the 1920s and was resurfaced in the 1970s.

Between the Coast Guard, Brown Field and Tijuana's airport, there is a lot of air traffic in the area, and sometimes Navy activity is mistaken with Homeland Security, who fly almost identical H-60 helicopters, Peters said.

"So often you'll hear noise complaints coming in late at night, believe it or not, most of those, I'm almost positive but we can't put a number on it, are generated from the Department of Homeland Security cause they fly up and Coronado and Palm Avenue and have the lights on and what not," Peters said.

"We'll hear, 'Hey, I see a Navy helicopter,' but in reality it's not."

In the future, NOLF IB may get a new air traffic control tower, and could do more than helicopter training

Helicopter pilots trained at NOLF IB go on to anti-mine or anti-submarine warfare, search and rescue operations, special operations, maritime security and more.

"We're going from a blue water Navy to a brown water Navy, brown water Navy meaning we're doing a lot more closer to shore now," Peters said.

"Back in the day, we called it the white fleet, back in the time of Theodore Roosevelt and so forth, and we're shifting to a spec ops platform."

Find out what's happening in Imperial Beachwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Clarification: A quote in this article was removed and replaced with another in order to better clarify a statement made by Lt. John Peters. The original quote read "The Navy's shifting from the white fleet to a special operations platform, from a white Navy to a brown Navy, meaning more operations closer to the coast."


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