WARWICK — Mayor Scott Avedisian is blasting the
findings of a draft Federal Aviation Administration study that examines the
local impact of expanding T.F. Green Airport, calling the review incomplete and
at times, seriously flawed.
In a 73-page document sent to the FAA, the mayor berates the study’s
methodology and says it grossly underestimates the impact the expansion will
have on an already congested city in the years to come.
At issue are five proposed options for expanding the airport’s main runway,
any of which Mayor Scott Avedisian states “will cause
substantial, unacceptable, irreversible, adverse health, social and environmental
All will erode local wetlands, fracture neighborhoods, take homes from low-
to moderate-income families who may not be able to afford to buy elsewhere,
demolish recreational fields, lessen air quality and increase noise pollution,
the mayor contends.
Yet in the FAA-commissioned report — a draft summary of which was publicly
released in March — such consequences “are either justified or explained away
as outside the purview of study and analysis,” Avedisian
notes. The study assumes many of those problems already exist and won’t be made
worse by the expansion.
“The City of
It is not unusual for the mayor to criticize the airport’s expansion plans —
the city’s overall relationship with the airport has been strained, and the Avedisian administration, along with a team of airport
critics, have openly opposed expansion from its earliest rumblings — but the
mayor’s latest response ratchets up that friction.
Since February 2005, the FAA has been studying the impact of expanding T.F.
Green’s main runway to 9,350 feet, the length it says is needed to accommodate
airplanes large enough to provide nonstop coast-to-coast service. That stance
was reiterated in another FAA report issued last week that said the airport
must complete its proposed expansion if it is to meet travel demand by 2015.
The exact expansion plans will not be selected until later this year. As
part of the selection process however, FAA consultant Vanasse
Hangen Brustlin Inc.
examined the effects of five proposed scenarios on the community.
The FAA has never publicly released the complete version of that report. A
draft summary showed that depending on which way the main runway is pushed out,
it could swallow at least 204 houses and up to 53 businesses, eroding the
city’s tax base by as much as $2.2 million annually. On the flip side,
aviation-related economic gains for
Avedisian believes those findings actually
underestimate the extent of what expansion will do to the city. His response
dissects the FAA study page by page, assailing the agency for what he calls an
incomplete and biased look at the long list of consequences. He demands that
the FAA go back and conduct a more site-specific study before it embarks on a
multimillion-dollar construction project.
FAA regional spokesman Jim Peters said the agency expected and even invited
such feedback. “The coordination agreement that we have with the city gives
them an opportunity to review the work and submit their comments to us. It’s
part of the project’s dialogue with the city and with the federal and state
agencies that are taking part in this review. It is not unexpected that the
city would have some comments about the projects to date,” he said.
Peters refused to comment on the specifics of Avedisian’s
allegations, but said the FAA will review them to see if there is work that can
be done to address the city’s concerns. The FAA has said in the past that it is
too early to isolate more exact consequences of expansion.
T.F. Green spokeswoman Patti Goldstein had little to say about the mayor’s
complaints, calling them an issue between the city and the FAA. The Rhode
Island Airport Corporation did not receive a copy of the report, she said. “And
I can’t comment on something we haven’t seen.”
So why issue his list of complaints now, more than two months after the FAA
report? Avedisian says it took that long for the
city’s planning department to pick apart the FAA report. “This is a compilation
of all the comments we have made throughout the EIS process,” he said. “We
finally brought together all the issues we’ve been talking about over the last
seven years.”
The five proposed scenarios for expanding the main runway are posted on VHB’s website at: www.vhb.com/pvd/eis/
Summaries of the five options are:
•Extend the main runway mostly to the south. It would require that
•Extend the main runway mostly to the north. It would require moving
•Extend the runway both north and south, requiring tunneling
•Extend the runway primarily south, to avoid moving the east end of
•Extend the runway both north and south. This alternative requires less
relocation of
•The Federal Aviation Administration will hold a public meeting on June 14
at 6:30 p.m. at the
•The FAA will report back to the Rhode Island Airport Corporation with a
final recommendation later this year.