Federal Funding for much needed new airport construction and expansion comes with many strings attached, causing cost to soar. This is typical anytime your deal with an unbelievable bureaucracy of epic and biblical proportions. The EPA being part of the Federal Government has a lot of power, because many airports rely on the Senate Appropriations committees reports to get funding. These federal monies of course have strings attached and one of the strings is that the airport must comply with certain FAA regulations and other government regulations such as the EPA.
This is why Airports were some of the first to adopt zero pollution tolerances in their procedures of operations. These same airports issue permits to operators of various
aviation enterprises. Also of important notice is the fact that these same companies must comply with FARs Federal Aviation Regulations for various types of operations. For Instance FARs part 135, 121, and 95, which regulate certain types of airtravel, security requirements, jet charter, air cargo, and fractional business jet markets.
So with all these regulations there are significant barriers to entry into these markets, which is good for the companies already there, yet decreases competition and therefore higher costs for consumers and commercial customers, but even the smallest of airports usually owned by the municipalities and county governments cannot operate without the funds from the federal government to upgrade systems such as run way lights, VASI Lights (vertical air situation indicators), air traffic control towers, etc. Part of these monies will also go towards EPA compliance.
Over the next three years more money has been appropriated to our Nations airports than in any other time in history for a number of reasons.
1.) Balancing of Budget.
2.) Increased tax base with low unemployment.
3.) Largest government surplus in years.
Our Nation’s airports need to be upgraded and with most of the money going to upgrade busy airports such as Atlanta, O Hare, LAX, SFO, SeaTac, Denver, PHX, Newark, Orlando, etc. there are major upgrades happening. The rest goes to smaller regional airports, which also need a facelift.
A recent article in the Economist predicted that this upgrade may be the last major upgrade for the next 5-10 years, with the passing of the latest transportation bill. With so much attention on environmental efforts, airport managers of all airports are on a strict policy adherence to these EPA measures. Water flowing from airports is tested and they take it very seriously from De-ice fluids, aircraft painting, food distribution on planes to fueling and even washing. This is where environmentally friendly companies come in with our BMPs and NPDES approved washing procedures.
There are few companies that can handle this rigorous of a policy move and few players of previous years are still able to remain doing things the old way and many are no longer in business. The EPA has spurred much growth in the aviation environmental consulting arena. It has also made it easier for large FBOs (fixed based Operators) to choose outsourcing of things like plane washing.
Aviation consultants know there is a very long checklist airport management must use in determining if they are compliant with their environmental procedures and this information is available from the EPAs website. If a companies cannot meat or answer these questions to the liking or satisfaction of the airport manager or board of directors who license or permit such activities, then that operator whether it be an aircraft washing service or any related aviation service, need not apply, because the airports authorities will not, nor can afford to miss out on their fair share of the large budget allotted to update our airports into the new millennium. Companies on the leading edge of environmental technology with proper BMPs will be the ones, which win the greatest portion of the market share. Think on this.