[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 148 (Wednesday, September 17, 2008)]
[House]
[Pages H8336-H8338]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    ALLOWING USE OF PASSENGER FACILITY FEES FOR NOISE REDUCTION AT 
                           CALIFORNIA SCHOOLS

  Ms. RICHARDSON. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the 
Senate bill (S. 996) to amend title 49, United States Code, to expand 
passenger facility fee eligibility for certain noise compatibility 
projects.
  The Clerk read the title of the Senate bill.
  The text of the Senate bill is as follows:

                                 S. 996

       Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
     the United States of America in Congress assembled,

     SECTION 1. EXPANDED PASSENGER FACILITY FEE ELIGIBILITY FOR 
                   NOISE COMPATIBILITY PROJECTS.

       Section 40117(b) of title 49, United States Code, is 
     amended by adding at the end the following:
       ``(7) Noise mitigation for certain schools.--
       ``(A) In general.--In addition to the uses specified in 
     paragraphs (1), (4), and (6), the Secretary may authorize a 
     passenger facility fee imposed under paragraph (1) or (4) at 
     a large hub airport that is the subject of an amended 
     judgment and final order in condemnation filed on January 7, 
     1980, by the Superior Court of the State of California for 
     the county of Los Angeles, to be used for a project to carry 
     out noise mitigation for a building, or for the replacement 
     of a relocatable building with a permanent building, in the 
     noise impacted area surrounding the airport at which such 
     building is used primarily for educational purposes, 
     notwithstanding the air easement granted or any terms to the 
     contrary in such judgment and final order, if--
       ``(i) the Secretary determines that the building is 
     adversely affected by airport noise;
       ``(ii) the building is owned or chartered by the school 
     district that was the plaintiff in case number 986,442 or 
     986,446, which was resolved by such judgment and final order;
       ``(iii) the project is for a school identified in 1 of the 
     settlement agreements effective February 16, 2005, between 
     the airport and each of the school districts;
       ``(iv) in the case of a project to replace a relocatable 
     building with a permanent building, the eligible project 
     costs are limited to the actual structural construction costs 
     necessary to mitigate aircraft noise in instructional 
     classrooms to an interior noise level meeting current 
     standards of the Federal Aviation Administration; and
       ``(v) the project otherwise meets the requirements of this 
     section for authorization of a passenger facility fee.
       ``(B) Eligible project costs.--In subparagraph (A)(iv), the 
     term `eligible project costs' means the difference between 
     the cost of standard school construction and the cost of 
     construction necessary to mitigate classroom noise to the 
     standards of the Federal Aviation Administration.''.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentlewoman from 
California (Ms. Richardson) and the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. 
Graves) each will control 20 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from California.


                             General Leave

  Ms. RICHARDSON. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members 
may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their 
remarks and to include extraneous material on S. 996.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentlewoman from California?
  There was no objection.
  Ms. RICHARDSON. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  Mr. Speaker, today we are considering S. 996, legislation to amend 
title 49 of the United States Code to expand passenger facility fee 
eligibility for certain noise compatibility projects.
  Under the direction of Congressman Costello, chairman of the Aviation 
Subcommittee, Americans in California living and attending schools in 
the vicinity of airports will now get relief.
  The FAA predicts that 1 billion passengers will fly in the United 
States by 2016. One of the elements that will limit this national 
airspace capacity growth is noise. S. 996 will allow a 2005 agreement 
between the Los Angeles World Airports and the Lennox and Inglewood 
school districts to go forward providing over $200 million towards 
noise mitigation in these school districts over 10 years.
  This legislation was introduced by Representative Jane Harman in the 
House and Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer who passed it in 
the Senate by unanimous consent on February 28, 2008, which represents 
an appropriate compromise to noise problems for schools surrounding the 
Los Angeles Airport.
  S. 996 will enable new construction in some instances because sound 
insulation and other retrofitting of existing buildings do not always 
provide meaningful noise relief. Furthermore, this legislation defines 
eligible project cost for any new construction as limited to the 
difference in cost between constructing, ordinary building code 
standards for schools, and the cost of incorporating noise mitigation 
features in construction.
  The House passed this language as part of H.R. 2881, the FAA 
Reauthorization Act of 2007, on September 20, 2007. The Senate has not 
acted on the FAA reauthorization.
  Mr. Speaker, I support S. 996, and I urge my colleagues both on and 
off the Aviation Subcommittee--and on both sides of the aisle to stay 
germane to the topic--to support this good legislation. Students and 
teachers deserve quiet classrooms in order to maximize learning.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. GRAVES. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of S. 996. This bill is going to help 
alleviate the impact of airport noise in Los Angeles, California, by 
permitting passenger facility charges collected by the Los Angeles 
International Airport to be used for noise mitigation during the 
construction of a new school.
  Furthermore, this bill defines the projects that are eligible to 
ensure that money intended for noise mitigation is used for exactly 
that and nothing else. This bill is yet another provision to be pulled 
from H.R. 2881, the Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Act 
of 2007, and moved as a standalone bill.
  Unfortunately, our counterparts in the Senate have not been able to 
reach an agreement among themselves and pass a comprehensive 4-year 
bill, and time is running out to get just such a bill done this year.
  Mr. Speaker, I would urge the Senate to settle their differences and 
allow the Congress to send much-needed relief to an agency in turmoil 
as well as the flying public.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Ms. RICHARDSON. Mr. Speaker, I yield as much time as she might 
consume to Congresswoman Jane Harman, the gentlelady from the great 
State of California.
  Ms. HARMAN. I thank the gentlewoman for yielding to me. She is one of 
the newest Members of Congress, but she is a very active Member of the 
Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, succeeding our late 
colleague, Juanita Millender-McDonald, in that position. I want to 
commend her for her interest in this issue and for all she does for the 
Ports of L.A. and Long Beach and for Los Angeles International Airport, 
LAX, which is near her district, surrounded by my district and 
represented by Ms. Waters who is a coauthor of this legislation.
  I rise in strong support of this bill, one that I introduced in the 
past two Congresses and which, as you heard, has already passed the 
Senate.
  Imagine, Mr. Speaker, sitting at a desk trying to memorize a verse or 
tackle a math problem as jet planes roar overhead every 3 minutes. Let 
me repeat that. I have been there to see it. Every 3 minutes, a jet 
plane roars above the little school buildings in Lennox, California, 
immediately east of LAX.

[[Page H8337]]

  The children of Lennox, a mostly working-class community, manage 
amazingly well. I'm enormously proud of the fact that they win 
educational awards despite studying in classrooms that resemble 
bunkers. And yet Mr. Speaker, for the past 3 years, despite the fact 
that they reached agreement with LAWA, the Los Angeles World Airport 
Authority, to receive noise mitigation funds, they've been unable to 
get those funds because of a technical glitch in the law.
  That means, Mr. Speaker, that school construction has been stalled in 
Lennox and in adjacent Inglewood. So we have tried these 3 years to fix 
that glitch, and that is exactly what this bill will do.
  I want to point out--I don't think the bill's manager said this--that 
this bill does not require the expenditure of new funds. All it does is 
authorize LAWA to release funds it already has. All it does is provide 
emergency relief to a lot of kids in a working-class part of Los 
Angeles who have endured the most onerous conditions while trying to 
learn.
  I want to thank a lot of people for making possible what I hope will 
be a victory today: First of all, the leadership of the T&I Committee, 
Chairman Oberstar and Ranking Member Mica; Ms. Richardson; my co-author 
Ms. Waters; and Senators Boxer and Feinstein, all of whom helped get 
this bipartisan bill on the consent calendar today.
  I also want to thank former FAA Administrator Marion Blakley who, 
while a part of this administration, came to see Lennox, understood 
what the problems were, and lent her staff to us to help draft this in 
a way that it would get support from the administration. It has the 
support of the FAA, it has the support of OMB, it has the support of 
the Republican side of the aisle; and it's a model, in my view, of the 
way legislation should be developed and passed in this House.
  Finally, I want to thank Congressman David Dreier who made sure that 
we could get the bill to the floor today. He is not here because just a 
few days ago his mother unexpectedly passed away. I want to send my 
sympathy to him and his family at a tough time and note that this bill 
helps kids just like kids in his Southern California district. This 
bill does good things for education, and this bill does good things for 
the reputation of this House.
  I ask for an ``aye'' vote.
  Mr. GRAVES. Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Missouri has 19 minutes 
remaining.
  Mr. GRAVES. I was going to pretty much just talk about the specific 
merits of S. 996, but since my colleague pointed out that we should 
stay on topic, I think I would just expand just a little bit because 
this is an aviation bill, this is talking about--and it was mentioned--
the number of planes flying in and out of Los Angeles International 
Airport and just how important that part of the transportation system 
is to this country and how much we are going to lose in this country if 
pieces of legislation like the un-American energy bill that was passed 
last night are enacted into law.
  It's unfortunate because so many things in this country travel. Every 
single product, every single person in this country travels one way or 
another, either by train or by plane or by ship or by barge or by 
pipeline or by truck. Everything in this country travels, and we are a 
country that is very, very dependent on foreign sources of oil, 
unfortunately, for those products that we need for gasoline, for diesel 
fuel.
  We would like to see, and I would like to see, that dependence 
reduced. That dependence needs to be reduced, and we have the resources 
right here in the United States. Unfortunately, the bill that was 
passed last night locked away the biggest chunk of those resources 
permanently. That bill permanently put away any opportunity to go after 
those resources off the Outer Continental Shelf between zero and 50 
miles where the biggest chunk of those resources are and where it would 
be the easiest to go after those resources.
  It's unfortunate because there are no alternatives in certain areas 
of transportation, for instance, aviation, which we're talking about 
today. There are no alternatives but aviation fuel. It comes from 
petroleum. No alternatives are out there.
  It will be nice one of these days in this country when we do have 
alternatives to address some of our issues when it comes to being a 
country so dependent on petroleum, on gasoline, and diesel fuel.

                              {time}  1545

  We already have a few great hybrids in this country, whether it's 
electricity or ethanol or biofuels. We have some great alternatives. 
But if you're talking about real power to pull a train or to drive a 
ship or to push a barge or to pull farm machinery or to pull a truck or 
to fly an airplane, we have to have fuel. And it's unfortunate that we 
continue to see pieces of legislation brought forth in this Chamber 
that do absolutely nothing to address our real need in this country. 
And we're talking about all of those things that are important to us 
for energy--nuclear power, clean-burning coal technology, coal to gas, 
more drilling in places like ANWR and the Outer Continental Shelf, and 
all of those areas throughout the United States that have oil.
  And we can do it in such an environmentally friendly way. And that's 
one of the most frustrating parts of this entire argument. We can do it 
in such an environmentally friendly way because of the technologies 
today that allow us to do so many different things underground when it 
comes to those wells and comes to those rigs. We don't have to hurt our 
environment to be dependent on the United States and to Americanize 
United States resources. We don't have to harm our environment in any 
way. We can work with our environment. And we continue to use those 
resources that are un-American.
  So it's unfortunate, again, that we passed such an un-American bill 
in this Chamber last night. Many of us did not support that bill simply 
because it makes us more dependent on those foreign sources of oil and 
it locks away the biggest percentage of that oil that we have and those 
resources that we have right here in the United States. It didn't even 
address the refining issue that we have in the United States and the 
capacity problems that we have in the United States. And that's as much 
a part of this as anything else.
  So all of these modes of transportation, we're going to be doing a 
few things here for a little while, talking about different areas of 
transportation. It's unfortunate because all of those modes of 
transportation carry those goods and those people from one place to 
another. And when the price of that energy goes up, it costs consumers 
money. It costs everyone out there more money when it comes to 
purchasing those products or just transporting themselves from one 
place to another.
  So again, a very un-American energy bill was passed out of this 
Chamber last night. And we hope that we will be able to have an 
American energy bill, one that is dependent on American sources, 
sometime soon before this Congress breaks in October. This Congress 
continues to break time and time again without addressing this issue, 
without coming up with a bill that will solve those problems and will 
go to the President's desk. And it's unfortunate, Mr. Speaker.
  I reserve the balance of my time.
  Ms. RICHARDSON. Mr. Speaker, I would gladly like to get back to the 
topic at hand, which is really discussing the bill of S. 996. So, Mr. 
Speaker, I yield as much time as the great lady might consume, 
Congresswoman Maxine Waters from the great State of California.
  Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker and Members, I would like first to thank 
Congresswoman Laura Richardson for allotting me time to speak on this 
bill that I have coauthored with Congresswoman Jane Harman. I thank her 
for her interest.
  I had an opportunity to talk with Congresswoman Laura Richardson on 
our way to the floor, where she told me about similar problems that she 
has encountered in the Long Beach area dealing with the Long Beach 
Airport. So I know of her concern, and I thank her for the interest 
that she is showing in this bill.
  Of course I rise in strong support of S. 996, the Senate companion 
bill to H.R. 1708, a bill, again, that was introduced by Congresswoman 
Jane Harman and myself. This bill permits funding for noise mitigation 
in local schools in the cities of Inglewood and Lennox.

[[Page H8338]]

  The city of Inglewood is located in my district. Mr. Speaker and 
Members, this is a proud little city of 17,750 students. We have 13 
elementary schools, six secondary schools, one preschool, and one 
community adult school in the Inglewood Unified School District. These 
schools are very, very important to this community.
  In 2005, the City of Los Angeles settled a lawsuit with the Inglewood 
and Lennox School Districts. Under the settlement, the Los Angeles 
World Airports, known as LAWA, agreed to provide the two cities funding 
for noise mitigation in local schools; however, Federal Aviation 
Administration rules have prevented the funds from being paid. S. 996 
will allow the 2005 agreement to go forward.
  Specifically, S. 996 allows Los Angeles World Airports to use airport 
passenger facility fees for noise mitigation projects at Lennox and 
Inglewood schools. The bill permits funding of $111 million for the 
Lennox District and $118.5 million for the Inglewood School District 
over 10 years.
  As you know, Los Angeles International Airport is in my district. And 
I represent not only Inglewood, but several other communities in this 
district and this very important economic engine, the Los Angeles 
International Airport. And there are many issues that we are confronted 
with.
  I belong to a strong coalition in the district working to make sure 
that we, of course, maintain and support this economic engine, but at 
the same time, make sure that we attend to the needs of the people and 
deal with the noise and disruption that is caused by the Los Angeles 
International Airport.
  It is sometimes a challenge, and we cannot always take the side of 
our international airport. We have to be concerned about the quality of 
life for all of the people in that area, and particularly our school 
children. Airplanes arriving at and departing from Los Angeles 
International Airport cause excessive noise in my district. Deafening 
noise and rattling windows frequently interfere with the education of 
school children. Noise causes disruptions in lessons, making it very 
difficult for students to learn and diminishing the opportunity to 
study in a stable and calm environment. Noise mitigation funding is 
essential to allow the school districts to construct permanent sound-
proof facilities and help soundproof existing schools.
  This bill was drafted with the assistance of the Federal Aviation 
Administration and has the support of the Inglewood and Lennox School 
Districts, the Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA), and the mayor of the 
City of Los Angeles.
  Again, I would like to thank Congresswoman Harman for initiating this 
much-needed solution to the problems of noise and disruption that 
interferes with our children's ability to learn in a noise-free school 
environment.
  Mr. GRAVES. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support S. 996. I do 
think it's a good bill. I think it makes sense, obviously. And in light 
of time, I will urge support.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  Ms. RICHARDSON. Mr. Speaker, I join my colleague on the other side of 
the aisle in great support of this bill, S. 996.
  As has been stated by the original author, Ms. Harman, and the 
coauthor, Ms. Waters, this is about children having the ability to hear 
in the classroom and to learn, which I think is what all Americans are 
looking for.
  We urge all of our colleagues to support S. 996.
  Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of S. 996, which 
authorizes the Secretary of Transportation to permit passenger facility 
fees to be used for school sound mitigation in certain school districts 
in flight paths to the Los Angeles International Airport.
  This bill was included as section 113 of H.R. 2881, the ``FAA 
Reauthorization Act of 2007,'' which passed the House on September 20, 
2007. Regrettably, the other body has been unable to complete action on 
the Federal Aviation Administration (``FAA'') reauthorization bill. 
Given the Senate inaction on the reauthorization bill, the gentlewoman 
from California (Ms. Harman) has asked the Committee on Transportation 
and Infrastructure to consider S. 996 to allow this time-sensitive 
legislation to be enacted in advance of the reauthorization bill.
  S. 996 will allow the Los Angeles World Airports and the Lennox and 
Inglewood school districts in southern California to execute a 2005 
agreement between the airport and the school districts to allow more 
than $200 million of passenger facility fees to be used for noise 
mitigation in schools in the affected school districts. In some 
schools, sound insulation and retrofitting of existing buildings may 
not provide meaningful noise relief, so a new building must be 
constructed. Pursuant to this legislation, eligible project costs for 
any new construction are limited to the difference in cost between 
constructing to ordinary building code standards for schools and the 
cost of incorporating noise mitigation features in the construction.
  Mitigating noise is an important element to expanding capacity in our 
national air space. This legislation does just that by helping to 
create an environment where students can learn free from the 
distraction of jet noise.
  I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting S. 996.
  Ms. RICHARDSON. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Blumenauer). The question is on the 
motion offered by the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Richardson) that 
the House suspend the rules and pass the Senate bill, S. 996.
  The question was taken; and (two-thirds being in the affirmative) the 
rules were suspended and the Senate bill was passed.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

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