"We listen, FAA tells airport's neighbors"

Friday, October 21, 2005

We listen, FAA tells airport's neighbors
BY TONY DE PAUL
The Providence (RI) Journal


CRANSTON -- Federal officials yesterday assured a small group of Cranston
and Warwick residents that their concerns over airport noise and pollution
will be examined thoroughly before they decide whether to authorize
additional expansion at T.F. Green Airport.

John Silva, in charge of the Federal Aviation Administration's environmental
study on expansion, said the economic benefits of a bigger airport "will not
be a major part of the environmental statement at all."

The study will establish "a baseline" on existing pollution levels and
examine "the difference between what would exist in the future without the
project and what would exist in the future with the project."

Silva and the FAA's consultants on the study spoke yesterday at Cranston's
William Hall Library to about two dozen area residents, most of them opposed
to further expansion at Green.

When one made the now-familiar call for developing runways and gates at
Quonset State Airport and scaling back the operation at Green, Silva
surprised the group by saying, "We are looking at Quonset as a potential
alternative site."

He just as quickly said it was unlikely the study will end with the FAA's
choosing Quonset as its "preferred alternative" for airport expansion in
Rhode Island.

"I need to be as honest as I can be and say the data does not look good,"
Silva said.

The State Guide Plan identifies Green as the principal commercial airport,
he said, and a study done by the University of Rhode Island at least a
decade ago "said it doesn't make sense from an economic standpoint to
relocate all the infrastructure to Quonset from T.F. Green."

With several hundred million dollars invested in expansion at Green since
that study, focusing now on Quonset "makes even less sense," Silva said.

Carol Luriem of Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, the FAA's consultants on the
environmental study, said Green "is a very safe airport" but its runway and
taxiway system can be made safer and "more efficient."

A longer main runway and additional gates, she said, would enable airlines
to fly nonstop to the West Coast, Europe and the Caribbean, flights that
Rhode Islanders want and are currently buying about 800,000 times a year at
Boston's Logan International Airport.

A Warwick man, Robert Paolo, asked why that was the only "inefficiency" the
FAA seems concerned about.

"Why is it not inefficient for 2-million to 3-million people from
Massachusetts and Connecticut to come to Green?" he asked.

That has negative consequences beyond Warwick, Paolo said, but "Warwick
especially is being used as a doormat for out-of-state travelers."

"You make a good point," Silva said. "The answer to that is actually quite
complex. It has to do with airline competition, trends in the airline
industry, and demand."

"It's not that complex," Paolo said.

Silva said "the law prohibits" the Rhode Island Airport Corporation and the
FAA from telling airlines where to base their flights and how much to
charge, because of airline deregulation in 1978.

"FAA does not have authority to say, look, we want Logan to take all the
long-distance stuff and we don't want Green to get into that," Silva said.

"The only way [airport operators] can prevent [certain flights] is if they
don't have the facilities," he said.

Hope Pilkington, a Cranston resident, said of Green, "It's already a
too-large airport set in a densely populated residential area," but
"competition to keep [flights] here is driving expansion plans."

She told the officials that if most Rhode Islanders knew what it's like to
live next to the airport or under a flight track, "they would not mind
changing planes in Chicago or Atlanta once in a while."


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