Photo above – On May 17, 2024, Colorado Governor Jared Polis signed into law House Bill 24-1235. This new legislation is aimed to help reduce aviation impacts on Colorado communities. Photo L-R: Rep. Shannon Bird, Gov. Jared Polis, Rep. Kyle Brown, Sen. Steve Fenberg. Photo by Shahn Sederberg – CDOT.
On May 17, 2024, before a small group of community members and bill sponsors, Governor Jared Polis signed into law House Bill (HB) 24-1235. The new legislation is aimed at reducing the impacts of aviation on Colorado’s communities with a focus on the transition to unleaded aviation fuel and mitigation of aircraft noise.
The signed legislation comes after months of community town halls, and cooperation between the bill sponsors, local community members, and constituents representing Colorado aviation interests. This cooperation ultimately led to a bill worthy of solid bipartisan support.
“We heard from the aviation community, and I commend them for being committed to working with us to solve these problems, and in particular, to transitioning away from leaded aviation fuel”, said bill Co-Sponsor and Colorado House Representative Kyle Brown.
Measures in the legislation include adding two new Colorado Aeronautical Board (CAB) members representing Colorado communities impacted by aviation, and a non-voting position from the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment to act as a technical advisor to the CAB.
Other measures in the HB24-1235 include:
- Incentivizes aircraft owners to transition their aircraft to unleaded aviation fuel by providing a refundable income tax credit for qualified expenses.
- Ensures that the lesser of 10 percent or $1.5M of state aviation funding per year goes toward aiding the transition to unleaded aviation gasoline.
- Requires certain airport grant recipients to adopt a plan for phasing out sales of leaded aviation gasoline by 2030, and establish and publish a voluntary noise abatement plan.
“We’re very excited about the overall transition to unleaded aviation fuel. This bill will very specifically accelerate that transition by ensuring that state grants for airports support infrastructure upgrades for unleaded aviation fuel,” said Colorado Governor Jared Polis.
In support of the CAB’s and Division’s commitment to assisting Colorado’s public-use airports transition to unleaded aviation fuel, Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (BJC) was awarded a $35,000 state matching grant for the installation of a Federally funded unleaded aviation fuel tank. This complements an August 2023 Division surplus equipment grant for BJC, which provided $40,000 to the airport for the purchase of a pre-owned fuel truck that will be dedicated to dispensing unleaded aviation fuel.
Last May, Centennial Airport (APA) became the first airport in Colorado to offer unleaded aviation fuel. Additionally, the airport introduced a subsidy program to assist aircraft owners, operators, and fixed-base operators in transitioning to unleaded aviation fuel. APA is currently awaiting CAB approval for a grant request to further support the airport’s subsidy program. To date, over 80% of the training aircraft operated at Centennial Airport have been certified to safely use unleaded aviation fuel.
These projects pave the way for future state funding to help airports transition to unleaded aviation fuel as the industry makes progress towards a 100-octane unleaded fuel that can be safely used in all piston-powered general aviation aircraft.
Over the next few weeks, the Division of Aeronautics staff will be working to implement the provisions of HB24-1235, including outreach to airports about the particular requirements imposed by the bill, and the new unleaded aviation fuel transition funding provisions created by the legislation.
