Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2015

Floor Speech

Mr. SCHIFF. Madam Chair, I rise today to urge my colleagues to support the amendment I am offering, along with my southern California colleagues, Mr. Brad Sherman and Mr. Henry Waxman. The amendment would allow the Burbank Bob Hope Airport to implement a nighttime curfew between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m.

Thousands of residents of southern California's San Fernando Valley, who live under the flight paths or near the terminals at Bob Hope Airport, endure the house-shaking noise of air traffic during the day and suffer the jarring interruption of their sleep caused by roaring jets, sometimes late at night.

To address the concerns of those affected by airport noise across the Nation, the FAA established a process to consider an individual community's request for a curfew. However, the process was designed to be difficult, so difficult that, in the decades since it was established by the FAA, only one airport in the Nation has successfully completed an application--Bob Hope Airport--and then it was summarily turned down.

When Congress enacted the 1990 Airport Noise and Capacity Act, ANCA, it intended for ANCA to permit airports to obtain noise restrictions if they met certain requirements.

At that time, Congress exempted several airports from the law's requirements for FAA approval of new noise rules, if they had preexisting noise rules in effect to address local noise problems.

Bob Hope Airport, located in Burbank, California, was one of the first airports in the country to impose a curfew and has a long history of curfews, but was unfortunately not given the protection of the grandfather provision of ANCA that several other similar airports received.

My amendment would correct this inequity and put Bob Hope on the same footing as several other airports across the country that had curfews before ANCA's passage by correcting the omission of not allowing Bob Hope Airport to implement, on a permanent and mandatory basis, the curfew which it had in effect informally since the 1980s.

After spending $7 million and 9 years of effort, the FAA rejected Bob Hope's request for a curfew, erroneously contending that the small number of flights impacted by the curfew would impose too great a strain on the country's aviation system and impose too great a cost on users. In reality, the FAA approached the process in reverse, beginning with its conclusion, the one it wanted to reach, and working backwards to try to justify its intended and desired result.

It is important that my colleagues understand the impact of this amendment on aviation in southern California. There will be no impact on commercial flights. Almost all commercial airlines already voluntarily abide by the voluntary nighttime curfew of Bob Hope; and the impact on general aviation will be limited to 2 nighttime landings, 4 days a week by large jet aircraft, and a handful of nighttime turboprop takeoffs.

Because of the FAA's dismissive attitude toward legitimate local concerns, it is clear to us the only way to provide relief to our residents is through this legislative action. Madam Chair, I strongly urge my colleagues to support this amendment to correct an omission in ANCA. Local problems require local solutions, not solutions imposed by a Federal agency with a predetermined agenda.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

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