"State allowed to join lawsuit on 3rd runway at Sea-Tac"

Thursday, July 24, 2003

State allowed to join lawsuit on 3rd runway at Sea-Tac
By LARRY LANGE
THE SEATTLE (WA) POST-INTELLIGENCER


The state will be allowed to join a lawsuit over the proposed third runway
at Sea-Tac Airport, giving runway opponents an ally on some issues.

U.S. District Court Judge Barbara Rothstein this week agreed to consider
legal arguments filed by the state, through the Attorney General's Office,
saying a wetland-construction permit for the runway, which the Army Corps of
Engineers issued, is deficient and should be strengthened.

The suit, which runway opponents in the Airport Communities Coalition
brought, said the corps wrongly issued the permit without including
conditions set in a separate water-quality permit by a state hearings board.
The suit also said the permit didn't independently determine the need for
the $1.1 billion runway, which the Port of Seattle, which owns and operates
the airport, hopes to build by 2009.

The corps, however, has said it was free to choose which conditions it
included because more than a year had elapsed from the time the port applied
for the water-quality permit and when the hearings board added the
conditions. It said the agency was right to rely on the expertise of the
Federal Aviation Administration in agreeing the runway is needed.

Rothstein has not said when she will rule on the lawsuit, which asks her to
throw out the permit and make the corps reconsider it and to take new
air-traffic forecasts and other factors into account.

The state said the corps' decision, if it stands, could set a bad precedent
for other state environmental permits. The port applied for the wetlands
permit in late 2000. It was issued last December. The state water-quality
permit was issued in September 2001, but opponents appealed to the hearings
board. The hearings board decision was appealed to the Washington State
Supreme Court.

The state has told Rothstein all 16 conditions set by the state hearings
board should be included in the wetland-construction permit until the
Supreme Court decides which of the conditions will be left in the
water-quality permit.

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