Washington State HB1554 is back

wilkersk

wilkersk

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KennyW
Washington state House is considering a bill that would supposedly "reduce public health and environmental impacts" from the effects of leaded AvGas.

The "Substitute" house bill (from it's previous failed version) stops short of immediately outlawing the sale of leaded avgas. But, instead proposes to effectively hand over control of airports to the departments of ecology and health. And, there is no "Sunset Provision" for this legislation once airports have shifted to unleaded avgas.

Some of the provisions in the bill include:

> Increase distance from aircraft operating areas to public spaces (where does this distance come from?)
> Placing time limits on ground operation (idle/taxi/runup) of aircraft
> Eliminating "cast-off" of avgas (is this pilots throwing fuel samples on the ground, or....?)

>>>They snuck this onto the docket this afternoon (Saturday, 2/18), with a public hearing scheduled for this Monday (2/20), which is President's Day, a Federal Holiday!!! -Nothing fishy here right?

Legislators keep mentioning "peer reviewed" scientific studies that show elevated led levels in blood samples of children living near airports. But, I can only find one such study (we all know which one). And, it has already been shown to be flawed in a couple of ways.

If you live in Washington state and want to check it out or submit a public comment, here's a link:

https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=1554...
 
Wishing for a time when we just say 'okay, you asked for it' then cease ALL aviation activity in Washington state. All of it, including commercial airliner flights.
 
I waded through the entire San Diego Avgas study concluded last year.
There were no significant amounts of lead found anywhere on or around San Diego Airport.
If you want to read the study for yourself, you are going to have hunt for it. It's no longer on the FAA site, the San Diego site and not listed in the index of scientific papers.
Doesn't fit the agenda, so it's got to go.
 
For the chicken little folks, here what those anti aviation legislators really say in the new bill.

NEW SECTION. Sec. 3. (1)(a) The department of transportation,
2 in consultation with the department, must develop simple guidance
3 that can easily and quickly be implemented by airport operators to
4 minimize public health and environmental exposures to lead associated
5 with airport operations. It is the intent of the legislature for this
6 guidance, in the form of a document, to prioritize actions that can
7 be taken by airport operators most quickly and easily to achieve
8 meaningful reductions in lead exposures from airport operations, and
9 with priority given to actions capable of being implemented in the
10 shorter term and that will not be unduly costly or time-consuming to
11 implement, in light of the expectation that alternative lead-free
12 aviation gasoline is anticipated to become more widely available
13 within a decade. The guidance document must be based upon the 2021
14 consensus study report of the national academies of sciences,
15 engineering, and medicine related to options for reducing lead
16 emissions from piston-engine aircraft. The department of
17 transportation may consult with the department of health and local
18 air authorities activated under chapter 70A.15 RCW in the development
19 of guidance under this section.
 
AKiss20 said:
If you want lots of reports and peer review discussions on this topic, EPA website has significant amounts of it available online

https://www.epa.gov/regulations-emi...and-analysis-piston-engine-aircraft-emissions
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Knowing this, you still fly a plane, that spews all this lead out into the environment ? Hmmmm. :dunno: So do I but I don’t see it as a problem. I love the smell of avgas in the morning, it smells like…victory. For Christmas my wife gave me some avgas scented after shave.
 
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Morgan3820 said:
Knowing this, you still fly a plane, that spews all this lead out into the environment ? Hmmmm. :dunno: So do I but I don’t see it as a problem. I love the smell of avgas in the morning, it smells like…victory. For Christmas my wife gave me some avgas scented after shave.
Click to expand...
Does your 'aftershave' have a light blue tint?
 
Morgan3820 said:
But of course it does. The wife won’t tell me where she got it, but it sure smells like the real thing.
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You might want to check your blood lead level after the first few months of splashing it on your face each day. :)
 
GaryM said:
You might want to check your blood lead level after the first few months of splashing it on your face each day. :)
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I sent my engine oil to Blackstone labs. Do you think they would check that for me?
 
Morgan3820 said:
Knowing this, you still fly a plane, that spews all this lead out into the environment ? Hmmmm. :dunno: So do I but I don’t see it as a problem. I love the smell of avgas in the morning, it smells like…victory. For Christmas my wife gave me some avgas scented after shave.
Click to expand...
Where did I make any normative claim in my post? Nowhere. All I did was provide links to data and information on the topic. Don’t put words in my mouth.
 
Leaded AvGas is going to fade out, and frankly it should have years ago. While I’m not thrilled about the short term effects of such, I do believe the end result will yield a net positive outcome. I’m not sure why there seems to be contention about this subject.
 
AKiss20 said:
Where did I make any normative claim in my post? Nowhere. All I did was provide links to data and information on the topic. Don’t put words in my mouth.
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You are correct, my bad. Given your profession and location I made an assumption. My apologies. I’m just glad knowing that once we fully convert to unleaded fuel, the children will be so much safer.
 
Morgan3820 said:
You are correct, my bad. Given your profession and location I made an assumption. My apologies. I’m just glad knowing that once we fully convert to unleaded fuel, the children will be so much safer.
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Thank you.

I will also note it’s not inconsistent to believe that leaded fuel should be eliminated with a non-leaded alternative, while also believing the need is not so urgent as to justify stopping its use immediately until such an alternative is developed and available. That is my position if you must know. Not everything has to be black and white or the most extreme position.
 
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RyanB said:
Leaded AvGas is going to fade out, and frankly it should have years ago. While I’m not thrilled about the short term effects of such, I do believe the end result will yield a net positive outcome. I’m not sure why there seems to be contention about this subject.
Click to expand...

I'll take a stab at that:

1) it got wrangled up in the partisan virtue signaling vortex of post-2020 times, when it didn't need to, and
2) People need a strawman to blame regarding who is making their recreational pursuits less affordable, and this one is easy to scapegoat, even though the pricing delta isn't known and won't be known for a decade.

All sideshows, not anywhere near relevant to the environmental debate associated with the phase-out. Now, all virtue signal vitriol notwithstanding, to me the only actual bad faith actor in this faux-kerfuffle, are the housing NIMBYs. They're using it as a plank to leverage their usual BANANA/CAVE antics with regards to exclusionary housing land (and air) use policies. As you suggest, once lead is out anyways, then they'll have no more lead to scapegoat. But sure as the sun rises in the east, they'll pick a new canard to banana with. Hence bad faith acting. In fairness to the housing snobs, pilots are an intersectional demographic; they're CAVE people too, especially the higher on the socioeconomic ladder you go. A pot meet kettle affair among many on here, from where I sit as a "small fry" level participant in the hobby.

I won't cosign on any effort to push back against unleaded fuel, not because I have an environmental crusade to wage, but because I sincerely believe the argument of $12 (2023 dollars) 100UL is blindly emotional, made in bad faith, and not rooted in economic reality. Ditto for the "lack of piston fuel at any price" chicken little flailing on here. And I despise housing NIMBYs mind you. If anything, I believe the "housing as an investment" american pyramid scheme is what makes everything in this blasted country (to include recreational pursuits) less affordable by compulsory house-poverty proxy; not some unleaded fuel or tesla boogeyman (and again, I find EV fanbois obnoxious for technology-unrelated reasons).

I just found out my new "neighbors" across the street are geobacheloring all the way from Boston! Rank-and-file "equity emigrants" for whom a 400k mortgage is chump change. Thanks to him my g-damned cost of living just went up 2K in one year, and that was after a year of haggling with the county. But homey has to stay in MA as a firefighter while the family plays house here in rando suburban copy/paste C TX. I mean what a social fabric dystopia...but who I am kidding, I spend 5K-8K a year traveling OCONUS to aging family on similar auspices. So everybody is paying too much, and nobody is doing it because they want to. To quote Louis CK, "everything is 'amazing'... and nobody is happy" LOL. I digress, not for this forum.

Long winded way of saying, we have 99 root reasons why costs suck... 100UL just ain't one of them. *shrugs*
 
I don’t know what you’re smoking, but it must be pretty good.
 
The opposition to this bill did a good job. Monday's hearing on the substitute bill began at 5:30pm. The video is available at https://tvw.org/video/house-transportation-2023021406/?eventID=2023021406 .

I would like to add: IMHO, everyone should learn to use either a Gats jar or a chamois to filter their fuel samples. Eliminating "cast-off" is an easy thing to do. More than 40 years ago as a Navy enlisted plane captain I learned how to do fuel samples and maintain a fuel sample locker without throwing any on the ground. When I started flying other than Navy Flying Club airplanes, I was shocked to see pilots throwing samples on the ground.
 
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