(Updated at 3/13/24) A senior living community in Arlington is set to receive significant new support from the federal government.
Congress passed an appropriations bill last week that, among other things, allocated $2 million to Culpepper Garden, Arlington’s sole low-income senior retirement community. It’s home to 365 seniors aged 62 and older.
The funds, from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, will finance numerous upgrades to the 350-unit facility at 4435 N. Pershing Drive in Buckingham.
“The federal funding will help Culpepper Garden take up a housing revitalization project that will make much-need updates to its Independent Living and Assisted Living wings,” according to a press release. “The updates will include a host of renovations to apartments, installing new elevators and walkways, and more to improve quality of living and accessibility for residents.”
Virginia Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner helped secure funding for the facility.
“It’s critical for seniors’ quality of life that they have safe and affordable housing,” they said in a press release. “We’re proud to have secured federal funding to make important renovations that will improve accessibility and safety for seniors in Arlington County.”
Culpepper Garden was the first assisted living facility in the U.S. to receive federal rent subsidies from HUD, the press release notes.
The funds come at a crucial time when many Arlington residents, especially seniors, struggle to afford the cost of living, including housing, says Culpepper Garden President Marta Hill Gray.
The current waitlist for the facility is two years, “indicating a growing need for affordable housing as America’s aging population continues to swell,” per the release.
“We are immensely grateful to our leaders in Congress for recognizing the growing need for affordable housing for at-risk older adults,” Gray said in a statement. “We know that stable and quality housing leads to better health outcomes for older adults, and these earmarks will go directly towards improving our facilities and our residents’ quality of life.”
In addition to housing, Culpepper Garden is also home to an extensive garden with more than 30,000 daffodils and numerous native Virginia plants.
After the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that embryos created via in vitro fertilization can be classified as children, Elizabeth Carr — the first U.S. baby born this way — set out to reveal the potential consequences of this decision.
At a gathering in Ballston today (Friday) — surrounded by advocates, doctors and those who conceived or were conceived via IVF — Carr underscored the existential threat the ruling could pose.
“IVF babies of my generation, I’ve noticed, are now having their own IVF journeys,” she said. “And so, for this segment of the population, you literally are telling us the way that we came into the world is not going to be how you’re going to be able to bring your own child into the world.”
The roundtable, hosted by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), addressed threats to IVF treatment and pathways to protecting this procedure. While some participants expressed concerns these treatments could be limited, like abortion, Kaine expressed optimism that Congress could pass legislation this year protecting access to IVF.
He said there is bipartisan interest in a standalone bill with broad protections for IVF as well as specific protections for military families in the defense bill.
“I think the kinds of discussions we’re having, the attention, and the momentum on the issue give us a real shot,” Kaine said.
Couples who cannot conceive naturally, particularly same-sex couples, already face an uphill battle to growing their families, said Jay Timmons, CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers, who used IVF and surrogacy to have children with his partner.
“[Adoption] was pretty difficult for same sex couples,” said Timmons, a McLean resident. “We walked into it fairly naively and went through all the home checks and everything until the very wonderful social worker said, ‘Okay, I’m gonna put [Jay] down as the adopter, and I’m gonna put Rick down as your roommate.”
“And so we kind of processed that and said, ‘We’re not going to bring a child into our family under the pretence of a lie.'”
Kaine says Democrats are actively seeking support from Republican senators for the Access to Family Building Act, which he co-sponsored, guaranteeing access to IVF. Although Republicans blocked a vote on the bill last week, Kaine remains optimistic that it could surpass the 60-vote Senate threshold required for the bill’s passage.
“I wouldn’t want to pass this out of committee on an 11 to 10 vote,” he said. “I would want to pass it out on a real bipartisan vote, and I think we could do that.”
Should the comprehensive IVF bill stall, Kaine says Democrats could at least build protections for military families into the upcoming defense bill, potentially setting a precedent for future legislation.
“President [Harry] Truman, when he integrated the military in the 1940s, it set an example that then influenced the rest of society,” Kaine said. “If we do something in the defense bill for troops, their families, and veterans, I think it’ll send a powerful message that could then move us down the road toward broader protection.”
Last week, the Alabama state legislature approved a bill that shields IVF providers from civil lawsuits and criminal charges related to the destruction of damaged embryos. In Virginia, Republican lawmakers and Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who has advocated for limiting abortion access, have expressed support for safeguarding access to IVF treatments.
Kaine said people will not be fully protected unless Congress intervenes.
“I’m very concerned, and that’s why we need to do the federal bill because Alabama saying, ‘Okay, we will not criminally prosecute you,’ is not the same as saying, ‘We embrace IVF,’ and so it leaves a lot of gray areas,” he said.
“State legislatures could change every two years,” Kain continued. “State legislators are not doctors or scientists. They write bills that are vague, that make providers worry… Let’s just make it clear: that if you want to build your family through IVF, you can.”
Congressman Don Beyer plans to apply his growing AI knowledge to help improve the nation’s work on suicide prevention.
The congressman said that he is trying to figure out a way to use artificial intelligence to improve suicide hotlines. After enrolling part-time at George Mason University to pursue a master’s in AI, to learn how to regulate its use, he said he realized that AI could be beneficial in other areas.
Beyer said he wants to use this technology to analyze the current database of hotline callers, specifically those who have attempted to or died by suicide, for any possible triggers in the their lives. Some hotlines currently task this job to people.
“There are a whole group of people that when somebody dies by suicide, they do the autopsy, not on the body, but on their lives,” said Beyer. “What was happening in their lives?”
That autopsy, however, is done after the caller dies. Beyer said that he wants AI to identify those triggers in real time, while the caller is on the line with a counselor, improving the quality of counseling they provide. Some hotlines around the country already do this, he notes.
He does not envision AI models talking to callers; rather, they would pull from past hotline conversations to simulate crisis calls, helping counselors learn what to expect and say in crisis conversations.
“They’ve already fed those conversations in,” Beyer told ARLnow. “They know exactly what the typical conversation is going to be like for somebody in crisis and what the best conversations are going to be like for somebody who is on the counselor side.”
Beyer said that he believes this will allow training to run more efficiently and make working with the counselor’s availability easier.
“The hope and the expectation are now that this is going to greatly speed up the training process and also make it so that you don’t have to just be in a conference room for Saturday and Sunday doing it, you can practice at home,” said Beyer.
Beyer has tackled suicide prevention at the legislative level before. The congressman worked to allocate more federal funds to improve suicide prevention resources and launched the “Campaign to Prevent Suicide Act” to bring awareness to suicide and how to prevent people from dying this way.
“Just shy of 50,000 people last year died by suicide in the United States and that’s a rising number sadly,” said Beyer.
Beyer has also tried implementing preventative measures with the U.S. Department of Transportation. Last year, he re-introduced the Barriers to Suicide Act, which would require USDOT to establish a program facilitating the installation of suicide deterrents such as prevention nets and barriers on bridges. This act has not moved since being referred to a transportation subcommittee last summer.
Beyer said he’ll continue to look for more ways to improve suicide preventative measures while looking at the benefits that AI can provide.
“We’re just at the beginning, we’re constantly talking to the main four suicide groups in the country saying, ‘What can we do next?’ so that the 50,000 becomes 45,000 and so on,” he said.
Rep. Don Beyer is taking a leading role in Congress to address what he says is one of the most pressing issues this century: the regulation of artificial intelligence.
This year, Beyer (D-Va.) and a bipartisan group of colleagues intend to tackle a variety of AI-related issues, including the creation of deep fakes, copyright infringement and enhancing privacy protections.
Although the Congressman recognizes the difficulty of keeping pace with AI’s rapid advancements, he told ARLnow that the primary focus is on current threats rather than trying to predict future uses.
“I think we’re coming pretty quickly to understand that we can’t regulate the math or the computer science,” he said in an interview this week at his office on Capitol Hill. “We’re regulating end uses. So, if there’s bias in AI, we need to make sure that we’re saying that’s unacceptable. If they’re invasions of privacy, we need to say there’s that’s not acceptable. Here are the consequences.”
It is fitting that Arlington’s member of Congress has taken an interest in AI, given the numerous local startups also trying to innovate the technology and mitigate its potentially adverse effects. Beyer has gone so far as to enroll part time at George Mason University to pursue a master’s degree in artificial intelligence.
So far, he has completed nearly six out of nine prerequisite courses, including pre-calculus, calculus, multivariable calculus, discrete mathematics, Python three and object-oriented programming. He has several more years to go to complete his degree, however, because he is only taking one class per semester.
“So, probably, it’s going to be four more years before I get it,” Beyer said. “I’m hoping to do it before I’m 80.”
Given his background, Beyer has taken on prominent roles in several AI-focused groups on Capitol Hill, serving as vice-chair of the New Democrat Coalition AI Working Group, and is also member of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s bipartisan AI working group.
Earlier this week, he was appointed to a new 12-person bipartisan Artificial Intelligence Task Force that will be responsible for drafting a report on AI. The goal of the task force is to help elected officials understand its societal impact and guiding Congress in curbing potential fallout, Beyer says.
“Every technological breakthrough throughout the history of mankind… people have been displaced — agricultural revolution, industrial revolution, Information Revolution, the development of wheels, whatever. But we’ve always ended up with more jobs than we had before,” he said.
“But nothing has ever happened as quickly as this has, so you don’t get 100 years to adapt to the change of [AI],” Beyer continued. “You get a couple of years [to adapt] to the enormous changes that will come from it.”
Congress has already introduced dozens of AI-related bills — Beyer claims the number official number is close to 200 — aimed at addressing issues such as protecting people’s likeness and voice, ensuring AI-made content is clearly marked and stopping the spread of fake audio or video that could mislead voters about election candidates.
Beyer has also co-sponsored multiple bills, including the CREATE Act and AI Foundation Model Transparency Act, intended to enhance transparency about AI data training and equip the public, particularly small businesses and organizations, with the resources and tools needed for innovation.
He also think that government may have a role in supplying training data for AI models.
“One of the initiatives that I hope will advance is using government to create a big database — like OpenAI has — to train models on, but that didn’t take 6 trillion words off the internet which ChatGPT 4 did,” he said. “Rather, it is a curated dataset that’s smaller but has almost everything that you would want out of Wikipedia, the Encyclopedia Britannica, or whatever else.”
While the results of the ranked-choice Arlington County Board election have yet to be determined, the voting method has a champion in Rep. Don Beyer.
Beyer tells ARLnow that voters are more likely to see someone they support reach the Board as a result of the voting method’s choice in the six-way Democratic primary for two open seats. He had another reason for supporting ranked-choice voting, too: it rewards candidates who build diverse coalitions, meaning candidates away from the partisan extremes are more likely to emerge triumphant.
“I’m a very strong supporter of ranked-choice voting as it maximizes the happiness and satisfaction of citizens,” said Beyer, who has represented Virginia’s 8th congressional district since 2015, during an interview yesterday (Wednesday) at his office on Capitol Hill.
For the first time, local voters went to the polls on Tuesday — and in early voting — and ranked their candidates in order of preference. Their votes count towards another candidate if their top pick is eliminated in what is known as “single transferable vote.”
Since the Virginia General Assembly gave Arlington permission to try it out before the rest of the state, election officials say lots of people are watching this race with interest. That includes Beyer, who observed that so far, the voting process seemed to be working.
“The early feedback this morning was that there were almost no bad ballots, meaning that almost everyone understood the ranked-choice voting method. It is not that hard, all you have to do is go through your choice one through three in terms of preference,” Beyer said.
There have been reports of confusion leading up to the primary, particularly about how votes are counted. An informal ARLnow poll found that some 20% of primary voters were confused either by the voting or tabulation process but most found it straightforward.
For Beyer, however, the benefits are clear.
“With ranked-choice voting, people are able to rank their top three choices, knowing that one of those three people is likely to win. As a voter, you have the chance to see someone who you most prefer to be elected. Without this, if your first choice does not win, you have no say beyond that one person,” Beyer said.
The congressman said at the national level, ranked-choice voting could have a moderating effect on the two political parties, which are pulling voters farther right or left as more extreme candidates emerge.
“In the Democratic primary, candidates appeal to the Democratic base which means they’re going to pull it farther and farther to the left. Republicans are going to pull farther and farther to the right,” Beyer said. “In Congress, there is no overlap. There is the missing moderate. We are so polarized, however, ranked choice voting allows for candidates who will serve everyone rather than one side to be elected.”
While ranked-choice voting could theoretically help results get calculated more quickly, jurisdictions voting this way, including Arlington, appear to instead be waiting longer to ensure all the ballots are in. That means results are not clear immediately after election night, though this expectation has also been eroded in conventional election by more people using mail-in and provisional ballots.
For Beyer, waiting is a secondary concern to what he says could be a healthier democracy.
“I’m excited about ranked-choice voting and believe that it will be good for our democracy which is the key thing,” he said. “It will also benefit our parties and make our voting system more responsive. I am always advocating for it.”
Today, the Arlington County Dept. of Elections said its staff began uploading votes. Calculating who is eliminated in the tabulation rounds and redistributing second-choice votes, however, may not begin until the weekend.
Meantime, Arlington County is asking voters for feedback on their ranked-choice experience.
A group formed to address noise issues associated with National Airport says allowing more and longer flights is a bad idea.
A bill introduced last week in Congress would “allow 28 more flights daily and permit airlines to offer more long-distance service out of National Airport, where federal rules allow only a handful of flights to operate beyond a 1,250-mile perimeter,” the Washington Post reported.
A subsequent (unscientific) ARLnow poll found that just over 50% of respondents “definitely” support the bill, while another 15% support it with reservations. But the DCA Community Noise Working Group said Tuesday in a letter to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation that it “strongly objects to any changes to the DCA perimeter rule.”
“DCA was designed as a regional airport and is situated in the middle of densely populated and noise-sensitive residential areas,” the group wrote. “While expanding the perimeter to permit non-stop flights to cities such as San Antonio or El Paso may benefit a limited few in terms of convenience, many thousands more D.C. area residents would suffer the negative impacts of those flights.”
A spokesperson for Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) tells ARLnow that local lawmakers have expressed objections to the bill.
The bill “would dangerously overload DCA’s operational capacity and the very significant noise impact on the area,” said Aaron Fritschner, Beyer’s Deputy Chief of Staff.
“There’s a reason this bill is getting pushed by people who represent Delta [Air Lines] hubs over the objections of people who actually work with [the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority] and the local community to strike the balance for the different things people want from DC’s airport system,” he added.
Arlington, D.C., Montgomery County (Md.) and Alexandria residents, especially those who live along flight paths near the Potomac, have long engaged in a tug of war over aircraft noise associated with National Airport. The complaints have led to noise studies, tweaks in flight paths, and — last year — a provision in a law, inserted by Beyer, that calls for NASA to accelerate work on quieter and more climate-friendly aviation technology.
The full letter from the Community Noise Working Group is below.
A new bill in Congress would result in significant changes at National Airport.
The bill would add more than two dozen additional flights and would allow more long distance flights at the airport, which is limited by a federal perimeter rule.
More from the Washington Post:
Lawmakers from Georgia and Utah introduced a bill Wednesday to increase the number of long-distance flights at Reagan National Airport, a measure that is drawing opposition from local residents, airport officials and members of the D.C.-area congressional delegation.
The bill, sponsored by Reps. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) and Burgess Owens (R-Utah), would allow 28 more flights daily and permit airlines to offer more long-distance service out of National Airport, where federal rules allow only a handful of flights to operate beyond a 1,250-mile perimeter.
“By limiting the number of flights in and out of National Airport, we are squeezing consumers — they are the ones paying the price,” Johnson said in a statement. “Travelers who want to visit the capital region face the most expensive domestic ticket prices compared to other major markets because of limited competition.”
The measure drew opposition from regional lawmakers and the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which manages National and Washington Dulles International Airport. The agency has long fought changes to air service at National, arguing the airport is too small to accommodate additional air service.
MWAA said relaxing the perimeter rule would lead to more noise and congestion, as well as reduced service at smaller airports. Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-Va.) said the bill would harm the region’s airports.
Last week we established that ARLnow readers much prefer DCA to Dulles or other airports.
So what would you think about a bill that would allow more flight options, albeit over the objections of local lawmakers?
The post office on N. George Mason Drive would be renamed in honor of a late local postal worker under a bill that just passed the House of Representatives.
The House on Monday unanimously passed Rep. Don Beyer’s bill, H.R. 7082, to honor local letter carrier Jesus Collazos by renaming the North Arlington Post Office at 2200 N. George Mason Drive in his memory. Collazos, who emigrated from Colombia in 1978 and served 25 years as a USPS postal carrier in Arlington, lost his life to COVID-19 early in the pandemic.
The Senate will now need to approve the legislation before it can be signed into law.
From our reporting on the renaming proposal last year:
On Nextdoor, residents remember Collazos for the way he went the extra mile to help elderly residents and always knew someone who could help with a home improvement project. They also were overwhelmingly supportive of the renaming.
“Jesus Collazos was a neighbor,” said one resident of the Leeway Overlee neighborhood. “We called him the ‘Mayor of 24th Street.’ Sorely missed and it would be such a great tribute to his contributions to our community to name a post office in honor of him.”
A Tara-Leeway Heights resident recalled how Collazos helped her mother later in life. He came up to the door, knocked and opened it, announcing himself and putting the mail on the TV stand.
“My mom thought so highly of him,” she said. “He just did stuff like that. He was a person who really ‘saw’ those around him.”
Another poster from Tara-Leeway Heights said Collazos was well-connected in Arlington.
“If we needed the name of someone to help with anything having to do with the house, he knew someone,” the poster said. “He made us all feel like we were his friends. We miss him terribly. He made such a positive impact on everyone he met.”
Beyer delivered the following remarks from the House floor, the Congressman’s office said, as Collazos’ family looked on from the House Gallery.
Madame Speaker, I rise today to speak in support my bill, H.R. 7082, which would designate the post office on 2200 North George Mason Drive in Arlington as the Jesus Antonio Collazos Post Office Building.
Jesus was the epitome of the American Dream.
He was born in 1953 in Colombia and grew up in a modest, hard-working family.
Even at a young age, he was passionate about education and wanted to help his community and did so by helping teach literacy while still a high school student.
After graduating high school, Jesus attended the Universidad de San Buenaventura Cali to pursue a degree in accounting.
In 1978, Jesus immigrated to Washington, D.C. to reunite with his mother and sisters in hopes of seeking a better future.
In 1980, Jesus married the love of his life, Luz Miriam, who is here today with their children, Vanessa and Michael.
After working in accounting positions at various hotels, he applied to the United States Postal Service as a letter carrier, where he would embark on a 25-year career.
He made an impression early on and was given a temporary assignment in leadership which turned into a permanent offer.
He ultimately turned it down to remain a mail carrier.
This turned out to be the right decision as Jesus preferred to spend his days outdoors, building relationships on his route, and connecting with the neighborhood.
(Updated at 9:30 p.m.) What many believed would be the most competitive Arlington County Board race in four years has turned out to be another convincing Democratic victory.
The three-way race between incumbent Democrat Matt de Ferranti and independents Audrey Clement and Adam Theo is, at least to some degree, a referendum on Missing Middle housing.
Clement strongly opposes the proposal to allow smaller-scale multifamily housing in neighborhoods currently zoned only for single-family homes, while Theo supports it. De Ferranti, meanwhile, staked out a middle ground, expressing opposition to the higher 8-unit end of the potential range of allowed housing types.
With 55 out of 57 precincts reporting, de Ferranti has 60% of the vote to 28% for Clement and 10% for Theo.
Both Clement and Theo ran for County Board last year, before Missing Middle came to the fore as a hot-button local issue. In the 2021 race, Democrat Takis Karantonis carried about 60% of the vote to 18% for Clement, 6% for Theo and 14% for Mike Cantwell, another independent candidate..
The Missing Middle proposal has attracted the ire of many homeowners, while a coalition of groups — from affordable housing boosters to the local chapter of the NAACP — support it.
An early look at precinct-by-precinct results shows support for Clement in Arlington’s northern, single-family home neighborhoods. The Madison district in far northern Arlington, for instance, has voted 58% for Clement to 36% for de Ferranti and 4% for Theo. She also claimed the Thrifton (Woodmont), Rock Spring, and Yorktown districts — all also in far northern Arlington.
That compares to the more renter-heavy Met Park district, in the Pentagon City neighborhood, which voted 64% for de Ferranti and 20% for Clement and 15% for Theo. A more “in between” district — Fairlington, with its mix of townhouses and smaller condo buildings — voted 66% for de Ferranti, 23% for Clement and 9% for Theo.
Also on the ballot today were School Board and congressional races, which were even more lopsided for the Democratic candidates.
For the open Arlington School Board seat vacated by Barbara Kanninen, Arlington County Democratic Committee-endorsed candidate Bethany Sutton has 68% of the vote to 30% for independent James ‘Vell’ Rives IV.
Meanwhile, incumbent Rep. Don Beyer has 77% of the vote in the Virginia 8th District congressional race, to 21% for Republican Karina Lipsman and 1.5% for independent Teddy Fikre.
Arlington Democrats claimed victory on Twitter just after 9 p.m.
Results are in! Congrats to @DonBeyerVA, @Matt4Arlington on their re-elections to Congress and Arlington County Board and to @BethanyZSutton on her election to the Arlington School Board!
Thank you to the staff & volunteers for their hard work #KeepingArlingtonBlue pic.twitter.com/fQbOjJ6O18
— Arlington Democrats (@arlingtondems) November 9, 2022
De Ferranti tells ARLnow he was impressed by the 85,000 people who voted this election, in which there was no senatorial, gubernatorial or presidential race.
“In Virginia, that doesn’t happen very often,” he said. “There are other elections where there is an even lower turnout. This is a pretty rare election, and to have 85,000 vote in this election is a pretty solid turnout.”
He said addressing climate change, investing in schools and tackling affordable housing and housing affordability — “related but distinct” issues — will be key priorities this term.
“I’m grateful to Arlington residents for the chance to serve them,” he said. “I love doing this job and I’m humbled, grateful, and looking forward to serving over the next four years. I’m going to try and live up to Arlingtonians: that means being smart, thoughtful and compassionate, caring about our community and being forward-looking.”
Clement told ARLnow she was dismayed with the results, though she won four out of 54 districts — including Madison, with her 22-point margin — and came within just over 1% of the vote in another.
“I didn’t perform as well as I thought I would,” she said. “I thought I would push 40% — the sentiment I got on the street indicated a better showing.”
County Fair Starts Today — “The Arlington County Fair will take place from August 17 – 21 at Thomas Jefferson Community Center located at 3501 2nd Street S. The Arlington County Police Department will conduct the following road closure to accommodate the event: From approximately 8:00 a.m. on August 17 to 11:00 p.m. on August 21… 2nd Street S. closed between S. Jackson Street and S. Irving Street.” [ACPD]
Fewer Car Tax Notices — “Arlington County Board members as part of their annual budget process eliminated the $33-per-vehicle decal fee… About 20,000 vehicles will thus have nothing owed on them, and the treasurer’s office has decided not to send notices to them. An additional 30,000 county residents who own two or more vehicles under the same name will see their billing information consolidated into a single mailing in order to achieve ‘significant savings on paper and postage,’ Treasurer Carla de la Pava said in an Aug. 15 letter.” [Sun Gazette]
Senators Hail New Law — “U.S. Sens. Mark R. Warner and Tim Kaine (both D-VA) released the following statement after President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law: ‘We’re proud that this law will lower the price of prescription drugs, reduce the deficit, bring down energy bills and fight climate change… We will continue to look for ways to support the health and well-being of our communities, decrease inflation, and lower costs for Virginians.'” [Sen. Mark Warner]
Opera Making a Comeback? — “Supporters of Northern Virginia’s opera scene are hoping to reanimate the dormant Opera Guild of Northern Virginia, which through the years has raised funds and provided other support to opera organizations as well as promoting fellowships among those who appreciate the art form and introducing children to the unique and inclusive nature of opera.” [Sun Gazette]
It’s Wednesday — Partly cloudy throughout the day. High of 81 and low of 65. Sunrise at 6:26 am and sunset at 8:02 pm. [Weather.gov]
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) is addressing a key constituent concern — airplane noise — through the just-signed CHIPS Act.
The $280 billion bill is primarily focused on boosting domestic semiconductor manufacturing, but contains other scientific research provisions. Among them is wording from Beyer to “bolster NASA’s efforts to reduce emissions from the aviation industry while also reducing the impact of airplane noise in airport-adjacent communities.”
“Climate change and aircraft noise have always been two of the most consistent constituent concerns in my district,” Beyer said in a statement yesterday. “I wrote a bill to address both problems – the Cleaner, Quieter Airplanes Act – which President Biden just signed into law.”
The legislation “authorizes NASA to accelerate its work on electrified propulsion systems and the integration of multiple technologies and airframe concepts to achieve noise and emissions reductions,” Beyer’s office said in a press release.
The roar of jet engines from airliners arriving at and departing from National Airport has long been a concern of Arlington and Alexandria residents, particularly those who live along the flight paths near the Potomac River. Beyer has frequently pledged to address the noise issue from commercial airliners and military helicopters, writing letters to top federal officials about flight paths and attaching legislation to larger bills.
The full press release is below.
President Joe Biden yesterday signed the CHIPS and Science Act into law, which included the first NASA authorization passed by Congress in over five years. That section of the Act, Title VII of the science division, included the full text of Rep. Don Beyer’s Cleaner, Quieter Airplanes Act. Beyer chairs the House Science Committee’s Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics; he introduced the Cleaner, Quieter Airplanes Act to bolster NASA’s efforts to create the next generation of climate-friendly aviation while also reducing the impact of airplane noise in airport-adjacent communities.
“Climate change and aircraft noise have always been two of the most consistent constituent concerns in my district. I wrote a bill to address both problems – the Cleaner, Quieter Airplanes Act – which President Biden just signed into law,” said Beyer. “As the climate crisis continues to harm American communities, ensuring we are also tackling aviation emissions is vital. This piece of legislation does just that by making the necessary investments to develop the technology to make cleaner flight a reality in addition to driving innovation that would reduce aircraft noise pollution.”
This legislation sets a goal for cleaner, quieter airplanes, accelerating NASA’s aeronautics work on reducing greenhouse gas and noise emissions. Specifically, this bill:
- Establishes the ambitious goal of commercial airplanes emitting 50 percent less greenhouse gas compared to the highest performing aircraft in 2021 as well as being net-zero by 2050.
- Challenges NASA to work with industry partners to carry out flight tests by 2025 that will enable industry to bring a new generation of more sustainable airplanes into service between 2030 and 2040.
- Authorizes NASA to accelerate its work on electrified propulsion systems and the integration of multiple technologies and airframe concepts to achieve noise and emissions reductions.
- Requires NASA to provide data and insight on new technologies to help the FAA’s work to ensure the safe and effective deployment of these technologies.
Text of the Cleaner, Quieter Airplanes Act is available here.