NORWICH – A member of the Chenango County Airport Steering Committee has requested that the facilities’ contracted engineers try to combine components of three federally approved and funded improvement/safety projects in hopes of saving taxpayer dollars.
Local businessman and pilot Matt Giltner appeared to follow in the footsteps of town of Coventry Supervisor John Phelan who, at last month’s meeting of the Chenango County Board of Supervisors, first questioned the Federal Aviation Administration’s recent award of $350,000 in grants for the projects.
Phelan asked whether the improvements would actually be affordable in the future, called the amount available for the studies “ridiculous” and said it would be better saved for the nation’s grandchildren.
The FAA grants would pay the lion’s share for engineering and environmental impact studies in order to eventually widen the airport’s runway by 100 feet, rehabilitate the existing runway and taxiway and remove flight path approach and departure obstructions. The remaining cost, about 10 percent, is to be equally shared by the state and from interest from the county airport’s trust fund, given by Lt. Warren E. Eaton Jr. in 1986.
Principals of C& S Engineers of Syracuse, the firm that has consulted on the airport for Chenango County over the past decade or more, were on hand last week to provide an update to the steering committee. Their report included details on the recently granted FAA studies as part of the first phase of a 20-year, $22.7 billion airport layout/capital improvement program.
Giltner said taxpayers complain about the large number of engineering studies conducted in the past by the firm in comparison to the actual construction projects completed at Eaton airport. They also wonder if the local economy can afford to support FAA’s safety and maintenance requirements, he said.
“I don’t care who says it’s FAA money, and not local taxpayer dollars. It comes from us, ultimately... It drives me insane to be throwing away money that we don’t have in this part of the country. We’re not White Plains,” Giltner said.
C&S Companies Senior Project Planner Gail McKee said she would submit Giltner’s comments about combining some aspects of the three studies to the FAA, but said she had already recommended the same concept to them previously.
“The FAA made the call to separate them in order to prevent delays in some aspects of the construction,” she said.
Giltner asked C&S for documentation proving that the FAA requires that the three studies be designed separately.
Chenango County Airport Administrator Donald W. MacIntosh, also on hand at the committee’s gathering, supported the engineers’ methodology, saying that the FAA “should be able to tell us how we can fund (airport) projects since 95 percent of the money coming here is from the FAA.”
“We’re wasting money, theirs and ours, it doesn’t matter whose. If it’s not in the FAA’s statues for environmental studies, then we’re wasting money,” Giltner said during the somewhat heated exchange.
MacIntosh said he was surprised that the FAA granted the funds to the county’s airport in the first place: “Three projects for this year and in this economy? That’s saying a lot about the faith FAA has in our airport.”
Senior Project Engineer Christopher D. Brubach said his company shared Giltner’s frustration with the slow pace of making improvements at the airport.
“I don’t want to keep studying. I want to build things. You’re in a tough spot here in Chenango County. There have been a lot of environmental issues. We’ve had arrowheads, wet lands, flood plains ...,” he said.
Chenango County applied for and was awarded nearly $4 million in 2004 to extend the airport’s runway by 300 feet to 5,000 feet. Officials said the longer landing strip would make the airport attractive to more and larger corporate jets. The county was forced to return the grant, however, after a deep layer of peat was discovered in the ground where plans called for an access road.
Later, FAA regulations required the county to actually shorten the runway’s threshold by about 400 feet due to trees, a house and other safety obstructions. C&S engineered construction projects that eventually replaced the threshold, updated lighting and other runway markings, and removed trees, a house and other landing and take-off safety obstacles.
The recent federal grants are for the $6 million, first phase of the capital improvement project, of which $534,00 is the county’s share. In addition to widening and resurfacing the runway and removing flight path approach and departure obstructions, it includes constructing a new parallel taxiway and a 10 bay t-hangar, acquiring Mead Pond Road, and relocating or purchasing two businesses adjacent to it. Workers are scheduled to break ground for the new hanger next spring.
Town of Norwich Supervisor David C. Law, chairman of the county’s Planning and Economic Development Committee, said closing the airport was not an option because the county would have to repay the FAA the approximately $7 million it has invested in it. “Seven million would have to be repaid to the FAA,” Law said. “The FAA owns it.”