Boulder, CO Noise Ordinances: Aircraft Noise (2026)

Boulder handles aircraft noise exposure through land use, not a noise meter. Section 9-3-10 of the Boulder Revised Code creates the Airport Influence Zone, an overlay meant to control development on land affected by aircraft accidents and by noise, vibrations, fumes, dust, smoke and fuel particles from airport operations. Zones one through four are drawn on the Airport Influence Overlay Zone Map, an attachment to the Zoning District Map kept on file with the City Planning Department. The section adds to the underlying zoning, and where the two conflict, the more restrictive one controls.

Zone Four and Zone Three are the outer rings. In Zone Four, a person who annexes to the city and then builds a new principal structure must sign an avigation easement as a condition of the building permit, and the easement is recorded. An applicant for a development permit under Chapter 9-2 can be required to sign one too. All new utility lines in Zone Four go underground. Zone Three carries the same underground rule, allows the same easement requirement, and sends every development application to the Airport Manager for review and comment.

Zone Two is where use bans begin. No new residential use is permitted, and the text names nursing homes, group homes, congregate care facilities, group care facilities and residential care facilities. Schools, hospitals, churches, libraries, hotels and motels and daycare facilities are allowed only if the underlying zoning permits them and the city manager determines the site and design substantially alleviate the concerns in subsection (a). The planning board can call that decision up under Section 9-4-4, no hearing is held, and adjacent owners receive first class mail notice at least fourteen days before approval. A nonconforming use ends if it is discontinued for one year.

Zone One allows no new construction other than airport construction, requires underground utility lines, and applies the same one-year nonconforming use rule.

Some limits apply city-wide, outside any zone. Nobody can maintain a use or structure that interferes electrically with navigational signals or radio communications at the airport, mimics airport lights, or causes glare affecting aircraft, and nobody can establish or maintain a hazard. The city manager also enforces Federal Aviation Regulation Part 77, including a clear area five hundred feet wide centered on the runway centerline and extending outward at a 7:1 slope.