Airport project breaks ground
Ceremonial dirt was turned at the Del Norte County Regional Airport Thursday to celebrate not just the real ground-breaking that will begin on the airport’s runway improvement project next week but also the many behind-the-scenes tasks completed over the past several years to create a shovel-ready project.
“This is the first turning of the shovel for a physical project, but this project has been going on for a long time,” said David Finigan, chairman of the Border Coast Regional Airport Authority, which manages Del Norte’s airport. “All along the line we’ve heard from various stages, consistently, year after year, that ‘You can’t do it.’ Well, I’m here to show you today that we can.”
Finigan, who represents Del Norte County on the Airport Board as a county supervisor, noted how the multi-agency airport authority was created specifically for the political clout needed to develop projects like runway improvement and the building of a new terminal.
Elk Valley Rancheria, one of the charter members of the airport authority, presented the airport with a $100,000 check on Thursday to finance airport projects.
“Instead of doing the commitment for $20,000 a year for five years, Elk Valley just stood up and said, ‘We’re just going to put $100,000 on the table’ and shocked the hell out of all of us — now that’s a commitment,” Finigan said after the ceremony. “This will go in the bank for matching funds for some of these other federal grants that are coming down.”
Dale Miller, chairman of the Elk Valley Rancheria, said that tribal officials use the airport frequently to attend necessary meetings in Sacramento and Washington, D.C., and it’s a benefit to the whole community.
“Hopefully, it’s going to help with our economy down the road, which we’re a part of, and I think it’s a really important thing for all of us,” Miller said.
Airport program manager Susan Daugherty said that the agency does not yet have all of the matching funds needed for grants that have been tentatively awarded.
The Runway Safety Area project breaks ground next week and will improve shoulders and buffer zones, bringing the airport up to minimum standards that the Federal Aviation Administration has said all U.S. commercial airports must meet by December 2015 or risk losing their operating permits.
The federal government is funding 95 percent of the $16 million RSA project, but the rest must come from local matching funds, including from member agencies of the airport authority, like the City of Brookings.
A $400,000 grant to Brookings from the Oregon Department of Transportation’s ConnectOregon 5 program will be used for the project. This was not an easy sell at first to Oregon bureaucrats, considering the airport’s location in California, according to Brookings City Manager Gary Milliman.
“We’ve finally been successful at getting acceptance among Oregon’s decision-makers at several levels that this airport truly serves an Oregon population as well as a California population,” Milliman said, adding that a prevalence of Oregon license plates in the Del Norte airport’s parking lot on any given day is proof. “For Brookings, this is as much our airport as it is Crescent City’s airport.”
Mark Usselman, area manager for ODOT, said that his agency has recognized the importance of Del Norte’s airport for some time, but it was always difficult finding a way to help fund it.
“But through ConnectOregon 5 we were able to prioritize this project, and it was in the top 20 for projects across the state in Oregon, so it was funded,” Usselman said.
John Driscoll, district representative for U.S. Congressman Jared Huffman, came to the ground-breaking ceremony to express the congressman’s thanks and congratulations for the progress of the project, which had difficult environmental mitigation components unlike other airports’ Runway Safety Area improvements.
“In many places (runway improvement work) was really simple, but here on the beautiful North Coast it was anything but easy. Through hard work, difficult negotiations and careful planning the project will be able to fulfill its obligation to make up for the loss of wetlands that will result around the airport,” Driscoll said. “Much of that will be made up by protecting and enhancing wetlands in the Pacific Shores subdivision and in Bay Meadows. In other words, the community and the environment end up with something better than what they have.”
The work that will be completed over the next three months includes constructing a new electrical vault building that will provide electricity to new runway lights that will be installed, creating new signage and aviation markings for the runways, and other utility work associated with the electrical infrastructure, according to Jimmy Paulding, project manager with the project’s general contractor, Vanir Construction.
Most of the major earth-moving components of the RSA project cannot be completed until the California Coastal Commission approves a permit application that outlines how new wetlands will be created within the Lake Earl and Tolowa Dunes area to make up for wetlands disturbed by the runway project.
Finalizing those plans has been a tricky task since it involves purchasing half-acre lots from willing sellers in the Pacific Shores subdivision and removing county roads no longer needed to service those private lots.
Despite the 60-year-old subdivision’s history of not being developable, willing sellers did not come flocking to the $5,000-per-lot offer made by the airport
authority.
The uncertainty of Pacific Shores has made the creation of an environmental mitigation plan a dynamic process.
“It’s been kind of a moving target as the lots from willing sellers in Pacific Shores have trickled in over time,” said Melissa Kraemer, supervising planner for the North Coast District of the Coastal
Commission.
Because of the lack of willing sellers, the Coastal Commission allowed the airport authority to purchase the 75-acre, undeveloped Bay Meadows subdivision for wetland mitigation, despite the Coastal Commission’s stated desire to use Pacific Shores sites.
Kraemer said it is expected that the airport authority’s application will be approved during the January 2015 Coastal Commission meeting, just as the phase 1 work is being completed.
Several years ago a meeting was held in the airport hangars adjacent to the airport authority’s office to talk about building a new terminal for the Del Norte County Regional Airport, Finigan recalled on Friday.
U.S. Congressmen Mike Thompson and Peter DeFazio were both present to support the initiative.
“That was when we solidified that, when it comes to the economics of transportation, that border between Del Norte and Curry County doesn’t exist,” Finigan said.
Any support for a new terminal diminished with the terrorist attacks on 9/11. The federal government prioritized beefing up security fences and a new security screening building (a double-wide trailer) before talk of a new terminal could move forward, Finigan said.
As time passed, more environmental restrictions surfaced, with the California Coastal Commission calling for the use of the contentious Pacific Shores area for mitigation and asking for subterranean tunnels to allow frogs to pass under the roadway leading to the airport, Finigan said.
But the airport authority persevered, and the environmental work that will be completed for the RSA project will also cover a new terminal building if funding is found.
“We adapted a philosophy that it’s imperative that we get this done, so we’re going to find a way to work with environmental and permitting agencies,” Finigan said. He predicts that the momentum from the RSA project will feed right into the almost shovel-ready new terminal building project.
During Thursday’s ceremony, the airport authority’s new director, Matthew Leitner, thanked all of the people involved, including his predecessor, James Bernard, who many say was crucial for pushing these projects through.
“Without their ingenuity, tenacity and resourcefulness, this project would’ve never made it from inception to initiation,” Leitner said.
Source: By Adam Spencer
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