Midway Airport Operation Supported Only Till Nov. 30

Posted on: Thursday, November 13, 2003

Midway Airport Operation Supported Only Till Nov. 30
Honolulu Advertiser, HI


The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service continues to operate the airfield at
Midway Atoll while it waits for Congress to conclude budget discussions on
paying for the mid-ocean runway.

Midway Atoll, all 2.5 square miles, once was home to about 1,500 people
when it was used as a Navy base. Now, even continued use of the airstrip
is in question.

The airport operation is financed through the end of this month.

A Senate transportation appropriations bill has authorized $6 million for
keeping the runway open next year, but the House of Representatives has
not allocated money for it, said Barbara Maxfield, of the agency's Pacific
Islands office. The differences will have to be worked out in conference
committee, she said.

The Department of Interior's budget for the 2004 fiscal year has been
approved by both houses of Congress and has been signed by the president —
but doesn't provide the cash to run the airport. That measure says the
service may legally run the airport, but that the service doesn't really
need an airport to operate the wildlife refuge. It says the agencies that
do need it should be paying the Fish and Wildlife Service to keep the
airport open.

A number of government agencies and private firms benefit from the
presence of an airfield at Midway, which lies more than 1,000 miles
northwest of the main Hawaiian Islands. The Coast Guard stops there during
its law enforcement and search and rescue missions in the mid-north
Pacific. Oceanic fishing vessels have come to rely on the runway for
evacuation of injured or sick crew members. Trans-Pacific air carriers
that use fuel-efficient twin-engine jets need a mid-ocean field in case
they lose an engine.

Thus far, the Fish and Wildlife Service said, none has volunteered money
to keep the runway open.

Midway is a nesting site for hundreds of thousands of seabirds, and a
place where Hawaiian monk seals and green sea turtles haul out. It also is
a national historical site, with a century of history as a communications
relay area, an oceanic refueling stop for early long-distance aircraft,
and most notably, the site of the battle that turned the tide in the
Pacific in World War II.

Discussions about the operation of the airfield don't directly address the
issue of public use of the atoll. Bird lovers and military history buffs
had a brief period when they could visit the atoll during the late 1990s
and early 2000s, but squabbles between the Fish and Wildlife Service and
contractor Midway Phoenix Corp. ended that last year.

Service officials say they remain committed to public access, but the
status of the airfield could be the thing that determines whether a viable
visitor program can function.


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