BWI noise update to the HCCA membership and listserv.
Important opportunity for Citizens to comment on over flight noise.
The Federal Aviation Administration has posted an opportunity for citizens to complete a survey and provide comments on current policies and the use of DNL to measure noise. Recommend you use this link http://www.faa.gov/noisepolicyreview for a review a Webinar related to this request for input. You can view a past Webinar from May 16th
The text below is from the FAA and was provided by Senator Van Holland’s’ Office passed onto the BWIRT.
On Monday, May 1, 2023, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will publish in the Federal Register a Request for Comments seeking public input on four key considerations of its Civil Aviation Noise Policy. The FAA is asking the public for input regarding how the FAA analyzes, explains, and presents publicly, changes in aircraft noise exposure to affected communities. The posting of the Request for Comments will start a 90-day comment period during which the public can share their input by submitting a written comment to Docket FAA-2023-0855 at http://www.regulations.gov. The comment window will close on Monday, July 31, 2023.
The Request for Comments builds on and responds to public feedback on the FAA’s January 13, 2021 Federal Register Notice. That Notice provided an overview of the FAA’s noise research portfolio and sought input to assist the FAA in assessing how resources should be directed to better understand and manage the factors underlying concerns from aircraft noise exposure. The resounding theme of comments filed in response to that Notice requested that FAA begin the process of updating its noise policies, rather than wait for the outcome of ongoing research efforts.
The FAA is committed to providing ample and meaningful public engagement opportunities during the public comment period. We have scheduled a series of four webinars between May 16 – 28 to provide stakeholders an opportunity to engage with us on this topic.
We have launched a project website at http://www.faa.gov/noisepolicyreview, which will provide updates, resources, and access to webinar recordings. We will also soon launch a Spanish language website to expand our outreach efforts. We look forward to your participation and engagement with the Notice.
Maryland Bills SB 162 and HB 204 pass to amend the Maryland Aviation Commission
SB 162 sponsored by Senators Lam, Beidle, Elfreth & Guzzone https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/Legislation/Details/SB0162
HB 204 sponsored by Delegates Hill, Bagnell, Chang, Feldmark, Grossman, Guzzone, Lehman, Ruth, Terrasa and Ziegler. https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/Legislation/Details/HB0204
LINK to Post passage text for the Bills
2023 Regular Session – Senate Bill 162 Chapter (maryland.gov)
Synopsis of the bill \Law provided by the BWIRT:
This legislation will modify the requirements of the established Maryland Aviation Commission to assess and mitigate negative impacts of aviation traffic at BWI Marshall. The legislation will require the Commission to establish policies based on accepted scientific research on creating and maintaining healthy and livable communities, consider information and advice from community stakeholders. The law will require that four (4) of the total of twelve (12) appointed to the Maryland Aviation Commission members be from Howard and Anne Arundel County appointed by State representatives. The BWI Roundtable would like to be a part of the vetting and recommended to the state representatives the candidates for appointment, to ensure a track record of advocacy and knowledge in airport impacts on surrounding communities.
NextGen flight path update:
The BWIRT (D.C. Metroplex BWI Community Roundtable) has been meeting with FAA and MAA representatives to establish new flight procedures for departures and arrivals. After many hours of review and input from the BWIRT Technical committee, the proposal for departures is expected to be implemented in June of 2024. BWIRT members are the only civilian group to be able to visit and meet with FAA engineers to suggest and influence changes to NextGen flight paths. The new flight procedures will create 2 flight paths from runway 28 the East-West runway and runway R-15 that affects Howard County. The FAA originally proposed this plan back in 2017 -18 to the BWIRT and it has taken this long to have FAA review the proposed changes and vet them to be published for the airlines and pilots to go live. The two flight paths will create roughly a 70-30 split of the traffic leaving BWI over Howard County. There also a change to the flight procedure way points to adjust traffic to follow a path representative of pre-2015-16 NextGen implementation. This was done to give some flight dispersion and relief to the areas of Howard County that are currently receiving constant over flights.
The link below is to the MAA slide presentation to the BWIRT describing the notational new departure flight path changes for runway R15 and runway 28. Go to page 17 through page 30 of the presentation to review the existing and future flight paths. This is the latest example available of the changes the FAA would implement in 2024 for departures from BWI.
120418_FAA-Proposed-Procedure-Analysis.pdf (marylandaviation.com)
This is a link to the MAA\BWI community website where you can find all the Round Table, FAA and MAA meetings and correspondence. You will also find reports on noise and how you can track and place a noise complaint.