Noise emitting from a Navy base is inevitable.

And the Navy says it takes careful note of each resident complaint and does what it can to mitigate the effect of its aircraft noise on its residents.

“We take the noise complaint process seriously, but we cannot promise you won’t hear noise,” said Operations Officer Cmdr. Chip Gaber of Whidbey Island Naval Air Station.

RESIDENTS CAN log a complaint with the Navy via phone or email. From there, Gaber says, each communication is entered into a database so the Navy can track trends and follow up on anything that appears unusual.

In most cases, complaints can be correlated with known operations, Gaber said.

A common complaint is that aircraft are flying too low in areas they shouldn’t.

Gaber said pilots who fly at unauthorized altitudes or in locations would be reprimanded.

“There’s very little for making it up as you go,” Gaber said. “It doesn’t happen here. If we had a pilot that was breaking the rules, that would be very bad for him.”

Air traffic control monitors all operations as well, Gaber said. If the Navy receives complaints that an aircraft is flying too low or in an unusual location, they go back and review recorded radar readings.

GABER SAID the Navy received 825 complaints in 2013 made by 289 individual callers and 797 calls made by 283 individuals during 2014.

“What you will see is that a lot of callers are calling more than once,” Gaber said. Approximately 145 of those calls came from one person in 2014.

“There’s a handful of frequent callers,” Gaber said.

In those cases, they still log the call but are less likely to follow up unless specifically asked.

“In all cases, the highest leadership has got eyeballs on the process and who’s calling about the noise,” Gaber said.

In some cases, there are instances where the aircraft has to make an emergency maneuver or needs to change its route according to weather.

“There’s always a reason people hear noise,” Gaber said.

“We don’t call everyone back, but we try to find the ones that seem to be something different.”

IN SOME instances, the noise doesn’t come from the Navy at all, Gaber said.

There have been times when a noise complaint has come in and the runway was closed. In those cases, Gaber said it could be a private airplane, a commercial aircraft or a Canadian military operation.

Both the Navy and Congressman Rick Larsen expressed their desire to somehow decrease the impacts of jet noise on the area’s residents.

Installation of a “hush house” was kicked around, but it would only partially mitigate the on-ground engine “run-ups” and wouldn’t impact the in-air noise, Navy officials said.

The majority of complaints are in reference to in-air operations, Gaber said.

DURING A recent town hall meeting, Larsen mentioned the possibility of installing chevrons on the engines to decrease the noise. But testing conducted by the Navy found that chevrons are costly and wear out, according to “Currents Magazine,” published by the Navy’s department of Energy, Environment and Climate Change.

The most recent change requires that pilots keep landing gear retracted during touch-and-go operations at Ault Field until they are away from the San Juans and over water.

“If there are potential mitigations, we’ll look at that,” said Mike Welding, public affairs officer for the base. “It takes time, but we don’t ignore it.”

CITING A lack of trust for the Navy’s public input hotline, the anti-noise group Citizens of Ebey’s Reserve created its own complaint hotline in January 2014. COER representatives said they would track complaints and forward them to the Navy.

“We have had approximately 460 calls since we set it up a little over a year ago,” said COER spokesperson Cate Andrews. “I have personally called back each person who asked, and I have heard a tremendous amount of anger, sadness and shock at the fact that this is allowed to happen.”

According to COER’s count, Andrews said, 70 percent of the complaints come from Coupeville residents, with the rest peppered through the San Juans Islands, Port Townsend and North Whidbey.

Another hotline, the San Juan County Jet Aircraft Noise Reporting Group, was also created, Andrews said. This group claims it received 350 calls just in January with complaints coming from Friday Harbor, Lopez, Orcas and Victoria, British Columbia.