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California Bill Aids Local Government in Fight Against Airport Noise Although California has noise standards for the operation of aircraft and aircraft engines at public airports, enforcement of the standards is largely a bureaucratic process that avoi0s questions of public policy. That may change under a bill (S13 1853) introduced Feb. 19, 1998 in the California Senate by Sen. Quentin Kopp of San Francisco. The bill would authorize a city or county to submit a written request to the state's Department of Transportation for a public hearing on aircraft noise at or near an airport. The department would be required to hold a public hearing within 60 days of receipt of such a request, and the owner and operator of the airport would be required to participate in the hearing. The state's noise standards, like the federal government's standards, are defined as an annual average "community noise equivalent level" of 65 dB. Present state law authorizes county officials to designate an airport as a "problem airport" if airport noise exceeds the state's standards. However, this action only produces more paperwork without effective political review, since "problem airports" are merely required to submit noise monitoring data to the state. Under existing state regulations the Department of Transportation may grant a variance from the state's noise standards, thus permitting aircraft at an airport to exceed the state's noise standards. Under Kopp's bill, airports operating with a variance would be required to make every reasonable effort to notify residents and businesses affected by a change in a published flight path for aircraft at least 15 days before the date the change is scheduled to take effect. The bill would permit a city or a county to request an investigation of alleged violations of the variance, and the district attorney of the county in which the airport is located would be required to investigate the allegations within 60 days. If the district attorney failed to investigate within 90 days, the state's attorney general would be required to investigate the allegations. Violation of the act would be a crime. The text of the bill is posted on the Web site "No More Noise" (www. wenet.net/--hpb), which also has the text of several bills in the U.S. Congress intended to minimize or eliminate aircraft noise in certain areas.