01:00 AM EDT on Thursday, March 29, 2007
By Cynthia Needham, Journal Staff Writer
The idea is to give the city a sense of what offense it
could mount in court, if necessary.
A legal team specializing in aviation “will analyze all the
different scenarios to help guide us in our opposition,” Mayor Scott Avedisian said.
Lawyers specializing in this particular subset of the law
can help determine what is appropriate (or not appropriate) for the Federal
Aviation Administration and the Rhode Island Airport Corporation to propose, he
said.
As the airport looks to expand its main runaway to 9,350
feet — the length needed to accommodate planes large enough to provide nonstop
coast-to-coast service — FAA consultant Vanasse Hangen Brustlin Inc. is examining
the effects of five proposed scenarios on the community, including impacts on
quality of life, the economy and the environment.
The report’s draft summary, released earlier this month,
estimated that if the airport expands, it will displace at least 204 houses, as
many as 53 businesses and dozens of acres of wetlands. Expansion would also
increase noise pollution and cut the city’s tax base by as much as $2.2 million
a year.
For several years running, the city included $150,000 in its
budget for use of an aviation lawyer, were one needed. But the mayor says he
deliberately waited to put a legal team on retainer, knowing it would take time
for the draft summary of the community impact to be completed.
Now that summary is public, Avedisian
says city must start looking out for itself.
But
“This is good news, but we’re getting kind of late in the
game. We should have had gotten legal representation for the citizens of
He and other expansion opponents say a lawyer should have
been on board when the city first heard that environmental impacts were being
studied, so that he or she could keep the city up to date on what was happening
with that study and help strategize as the process moved forward. Now a lawyer
would just be playing catch-up, they say.
“Plus $150,000 is not even a drop in the bucket when you’re
talking about the magnitude of this airport expansion. Lawyers will go through
that in a week,” Insana said. “It’s going to take a lot more money. On the
other hand, is this coming too late anyway? Did we drag our feet too long?”
“This is good news, but we’re getting kind of late in the
game. We should have had gotten legal representation for the citizens of
several years ago.”
Steve Insana
President, Buckeye Brook Coalition
cneedham@projo.com