Rhode Island Airport Agency to Vote on Warwick Runway Expansion

Posted on Mon, Mar. 22, 2004 
 
Rhode Island Airport Agency to Vote on Warwick Runway
Expansion

Providence Journal, R.I. Knight Ridder/Tribune
Business News


Mar. 22--WARWICK, R.I. - The future of T.F. Green
Airport is up for action in two halls of government
this week.

Tomorrow, the House Corporations Committee will hear
testimony on a raft of bills that propose to contain
airport growth. And on Wednesday, directors of the
state Airport Corporation are scheduled to vote on
whether to amend the airport master plan to call for
extending Green's main runway by 2010.

The airport consulting firm of Landrum & Brown, which
recently proposed three scenarios for extending the
runway, will recommend that the board adopt one or
more of the scenarios and include them in an
environmental study supervised by the Federal Aviation
Administration.

The board is scheduled to meet 4 p.m. Wednesday in the
Mary Brennan Board Room at the airport.

The House Corporations Committee is scheduled to meet
tomorrow at the rise of the House, usually around 5
p.m., to hear testimony on 17 airport-related bills.
Many are similar in purpose and language, but with
different primary sponsors in the Warwick delegation,
among them Democratic Representatives Joseph McNamara
and Robert Flaherty and Republican Rep. Joseph Trillo.

Mainly, the bills propose: To give town and city
governments the power to veto state airport expansion
in their communities.

To reconstitute the Airport Corporation's board to
give fewer appointments to Governor Carcieri, a
proponent of expansion, and more appointments to local
officials.

To require specific benefits for Warwick, including
noise and air-pollution monitors around Green, health
studies in adjacent neighborhoods, detailed reports on
jet traffic over the city, and more financial
compensation.

The Corporations Committee is scheduled to meet in
State House Room 203.

(Until the committee agenda was posted last week, the
hearing had been set for Wednesday, but the time
conflicted with the Airport Corporation's vote on
runway expansion.) In 2002, the Airport Corporation
adopted a draft master plan for Green that envisioned
building a 9,500-foot runway in 2017 or beyond, a time
too distant to include the project in the
environmental study on immediate needs. But when
Carcieri appointed James Rosati to head the board,
Rosati suspended the vote and directed Landrum & Brown
to study ways of extending the runway immediately.

All three proposals submitted by Landrum & Brown would
extend the main runway from its current 7,200 feet to
9,500 feet. They vary in direction, extending the
runway to the north, south, or both.

Consultants identify the scenarios as "B1, Northern
Shift," "B2, Southern Shift" and "B3, North/South
Shift."

The Southern Shift is the only scenario that would
avoid wetlands -- and avoid the veto power that the
Warwick City Council holds over airport construction
in wetlands -- but it would also condemn the greatest
number of houses, about 359.

Former Gov. Bruce Sundlun, who put the last airport
expansion project in motion while in office, favors
the Southern Shift because it would avoid lawsuits
over wetlands and put a longer runway in place sooner
than the other scenarios might.

Airport Road would remain undisturbed, and Main Avenue
would be tunneled under the runway.

Sundlun advocated the Southern Shift last week, in a
television appearance with Mayor Scott Avedisian, an
opponent of runway expansion. They appeared on Access
Rhode Island, on Statewide Interconnect A (Channel 13
for Cox Communications subscribers, Channel 49 on Full
Channel). The program will be broadcast again at 9
a.m. Wednesday.

 

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