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County to challenge mandate for airport study
By TRAVIS JAMES
TRITTEN
keysnews.com
The county will
challenge a federal requirement that it spend years and millions of
aviation dollars to examine Key West International Airport safety
measures.
New safety areas at
each end of the runway could protect planes that skid out of control,
but would also mean bulldozing some of the island's last wetlands and a
cost of $24 million.
Two studies have found
that the runway safety plan would be environmentally degrading, and
despite an alternative plan offered by the county, the Federal Aviation
Administration is requiring that another major study be completed before
a decision is made.
"The choice that I
would recommend is that we do appeal it," Airport Director Peter Horton
said. "It is difficult, frankly, for me to take this kind of stance
against the FAA."
The majority of the
county commission agreed with Horton.
The next step will be
to send an appeal letter to the FAA regional office in Atlanta. If the
appeal is denied, the county could take its case to the head FAA office
in Washington, according to Horton.
The FAA did not reject
an alternate proposal by the county to place an engineered materials
arresting system at one end of the airport in place of the
1,000-foot-by-500-foot grassy safety area.
The EMAS, supported by
environmental groups, is a 410-foot-by-116 foot pad made up of hollow
blocks that bog down landing gear and stop planes without injury. The
FAA-approved system is used at airports that have no space to build
safety areas due to natural and manmade boundaries.
The county sent the
proposal in April along with a feasibility study that showed the larger
runway safety areas would destroy some of Key West's last remaining
wetlands and cost about $24 million.
It was the same
alternative the county called for in an earlier study, Horton said.
"We thought at that
point what would be most practical would be EMAS on the east and nothing
on the other," he said.
The larger runway
safety areas would remove a combined 25 acres of the salt ponds area at
the west end of the runway and mangrove forest at the east end.
The county would be required to spend $14 million to buy other property
-- as far away as Ohio Key -- for conservation to make up for leveling
the wetlands.
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