Bedminster at center of flap over helicopters

1/31/06

Yearlong medevac debate shows no signs of waning.

BEDMINSTER -- It has been almost a year since the NorthSTAR medevac helicopter operated by the New Jersey State Police landed at Somerset Airport and touched off a dogfight between factions for and against the unit's permanent relocation here.

An application filed by Somerset Air Services with the Bedminster Planning Board to convert an existing hangar into a base for state police helicopter pilots as well as for paramedics from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey has been stalled since Jan. 5. The board deemed the application incomplete.

Meanwhile, the airport's temporary use permit allowing NorthSTAR to operate out of trailers on the 200-acre property near where Bedminster, Branchburg and Bridgewater meet is due to expire on Feb. 28. Bedminster Township Administrator Susan Stanbury said if the operation wants to stay, airport officials must appear before the Township Committee at either its Feb. 6 or Feb. 21 meetings.

Alan Harwick, an attorney who is president of the Bedminster Branchburg Bridgewater Concerned Citizens Coalition, said he plans to fight any request to extend the permit.

On the one hand, Harwick hopes the Township Committee forces the operation back to where it came from -- the rooftop of the University of Medicine and Dentistry rooftop in Newark -- while the Planning Board considers its permanent relocation to Bedminster.

On the other, NorthSTAR air medical coordinator Terrence Hoben said he wants the program to stay -- especially because the response times to New Jersey's westernmost region have been cut in half. For example, he said, a flight to Phillipsburg that would take 20 minutes from Newark now takes only 11 minutes from the Bedminster base.

'No complaints' Hoben said NorthSTAR is paying Somerset Airport slightly less than $3,000 a month to lease the land beneath the trailer and hangar space. Hoben said since moving to Bedminster, NorthSTAR's flights have since averaged three a day.

Somerset Airport co-owner Daniel Walker said, just like before NorthSTAR's arrival, two corporate helicopters typically touch down at the 200-acre Airport Road facility each day. Customers include Merck, Pfizer, Aventis, Johnson & Johnson.

"We had no complaints about our corporate helicopters. People got upset as soon as one was labeled medevac," Walker said.

Walker said helicopters have been flying out of Somerset Airport since 1946. He ran a helicopter school there for about a decade in the 1970s. New Jersey State Police operated three F-28, non-medevac helicopters there for four years starting in 1973 before moving to Trenton.

Five-year plan New Jersey State Police Capt. Rick Arroyo, the aviation unit's bureau chief, said his five-year strategic plan calls for one medevac helicopter to be based at Somerset Airport. He said that's all that's needed since the medevac program needs leveled off quickly after the program was created in 1988.

Arroyo had thought about also basing a homeland security operation out of Somerset Airport. He has since canned those plans because of neighbors' opposition and he said there are other North Jersey locations better suited for that kind of operation.

Arroyo said that since it costs about $1,200 an hour to operate a medevac helicopter, the state police pilots try to maximize each medevac mission. So after dropping a patient off at an airport they will fly over North Jersey's infrastructures such as bridges, waterways and tunnels -- as a homeland security mission.

Dispute over missions However, Harwick said his research proves otherwise. He filed a brief in court on behalf of the opposition group Tuesday rebutting Hoben's claim "while flights that begin for non-medevac related reasons do happen on occasion, they do not take place with any frequency." The brief was for one of three lawsuits fighting the New Jersey State Police NorthSTAR medevac helicopter proposal.

Harwick said the first flight of each day for five consecutive days, August 2-5, was listed as a homeland security mission.

He listed other examples from a random review of flight logs, including:

• A "general police" flight at 1:22 a.m. on May 5.

• On Aug. 29, left on a homeland security mission and returned to Somerset Airport. Later in the day it left on a "general police" flight.

Arroyo said most police and homeland security helicopter missions operate out of Trenton. Arroyo said NorthSTAR flies only two homeland security missions if the nation's threat level is elevated to high or severe. Also, on rare occasions the NorthSTAR helicopter goes on police missions, as it did on April 11, when a man shot a grandfather in Irvington, abducted his 4-month-old granddaughter and her mother and led police on a chase to Lopatcong.

Bedminster Township Committeeman Kurt Joerger said he will vote against any request to extend the temporary use permit and thereby allow the medevac helicopter to stay at Somerset Airport.

"Introducing it to the community under the cloak of medevac was deceitful and inappropriate," Joerger said. He called it "New Jersey State Police Aviation Bureau."

A typical mission Hoben said most missions are like the one at 2:30 p.m. Jan. 9, when Somerville police called NorthSTAR saying a man had been severely injured in a motorcycle crash.

It took the crew two minutes to tug the helicopter out of the hangar. The pilots fired up the twin engines as they waited for clearance. The blades began to churn, kicking up leaves in a blast of wind and noise, before its lift-off.

Within another two minutes it was out of site and landing at Somerville High School, where Damon Robinson lay in critical condition. Paramedics loaded him into the helicopter to take him to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, where the 26-year-old first-time motorcyclist later died in emergency surgery from his injuries.

The blasts of noise are why many neighbors such as Phoebe Weseley of Bunn Road object to NorthSTAR's presence at the otherwise sleepy airport, where pilots' first solo missions are logged on a dry-erase board near the entrance.

"It's very hard to think or function with that deafening noise," Weseley said about the helicopter traffic since medevac moved there.

Some residents have kept logs of the flights over the past year. Others call the airport to complain. Many have joined the opposition group, Bedminster Branchburg Bridgewater Concerned Citizens Coalition. Weseley hired an attorney to support her interests after a Bedminster Board of Health meeting last fall when she felt her opposition to approving a commercial septic system at the airport weren't being heard.

The approved septic system is right next to property owned by Malcom "Steve" and Sabina Forbes, said their attorney, Richard Sasso. Sasso said the Forbes live "close enough to hear" the Somerset Airport air traffic.

The Forbes have a helicopter pad that Sasso said the Forbeses have used six times since July. "He's really a car kind of guy," Sasso said about Mr. Forbes, the prominent businessman and public figure.

Sasso said his clients don't oppose NorthSTAR's emergency missions -- but hope that the New Jersey State Police could agree to some conditions, such as limiting training missions from weekends and evenings when most residents are home and mapping flight routes.

Sasso said his clients are concerned that the state police operation could be a "Trojan Horse" project, one that opens up to be a much larger operation once it's approved.

Kara L. Richardson can be reached at (908) 707-3186 or krichard@c-n.com.

By Kara L. Richardson
Staff Writer