CAA: GA News, "Illinois airport fence continues to wait for permit"

["Stephen Irwin" <stepheni@xxxxxxxxx>]

Tuesday, August 27, 2002

Airport fence continues to wait for permit
Fence remains unbuilt more than two months after Munster vowed to issue
permit.
BY PHIL ROCKROHR
The Munster (IN) Times


LANSING -- Lansing Municipal Airport manager Bob Malkas is still waiting
for a fence permit from Munster officials, but remains hopeful.

More than two months after the neighboring town promised the
long-awaited permit, Lansing has still not received it and,
consequently, has still not erected the 4,000-foot-long fence the
village needs to secure its airport, Malkas said Monday.

"The (fence) contractor said Munster told him the permit was available
last Friday," Malkas said. "It's still up in the air a little bit. As of
now, nothing has happened. We're still waiting to see a copy of the
permit."

Munster officials could not be reached for comment Monday.

Lansing applied for the permit in October 2000, Malkas said. The
6-foot-high fence, slated for a stretch of Margo Lane just south of 45th
Street, would create a rectangular alcove at the east end of the
airport, which is located at Glenwood-Lansing Road and Burnham Avenue. 

The airport needs the 40-acre site to provide a "clear zone" for
takeoffs and landings at the eastern edge of its east-west runway,
Malkas said. Each end of the fence would connect with a 12,000-foot-long
fence already installed around the rest of the airport, he said.

On June 17, Munster Town Manager Tom DeGiulio said the permit was
delayed from summer 2001 to June 2002 because Munster was waiting for
the Indiana Department of Environmental Management to approve a plan to
use the 40 acres to relocate wetlands.

Now that the state has approved the plan, Munster hopes to move wetlands
to the 40 acres from its former landfill, which is slated to become a
park, DeGiulio said. 

DeGiulio said he did not remember what caused the delay between October
2000 and summer 2001.

"It's all worked out," he said June 17. "I don't even remember the
details, except that it's no longer a problem. I hope within the next 30
days they will have everything they need."

Lansing needs only a week to finish the job, Malkas said.

"We've had the (fence company's) equipment on the airport (property) for
two years," he said. "I'd like to get rid of it before another winter."

In the meantime, Lansing has encountered at least two security problems
on the unsecured airport property.

A developer dumped dirt just west of Margo Lane about a half-mile south
of 45th Street, attracting kids who created a path to the dirt piles to
ride their bikes on them, Malkas said.

And a 200-pound piece of equipment used to mold rock was stolen from GF
Structures Corp. of Chicago, the fence contractor, he said.

Lansing will finish erecting the fence as soon as it receives a permit,
but cannot allow Munster to create the landfills until the Illinois
Division of Aeronautics reviews the town's plans, Malkas said.

"I don't know where (Munster's) proposal to deal with the property is at
right now," he said.

The Town Council was scheduled to grant final approval to the wetland
plan in July, according to DeGiulio.

While Lansing waits for its permit, the village has leased the 40 acres
for $1,500 a year to a farmer, who is growing soybeans, Malkas said.


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