Jon Von Duinen, of the consulting firm URS, points to the "run up" area which would be located at the spot where the existing runway ends. Under the recommended option in the environmental assessment, this would put the "run up" area 950 feet from the end of the extended runway. The "run up" area is where aircraft bring their engines up to full power to test that everything is in working order. (Photos by the writer.)

And on Wednesday evening, from 4-7 p.m. at Cobblestone Farm, a combination of a dozen government officials and consultants held an open-house style public hearing on the draft report of that environmental assessment.

At any given time, during the hour The Chronicle spent at the public hearing, the hosts outnumbered visitors. In a phone interview the following day, Molly Lamrouex – with the aeronautics division of the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) – told The Chronicle that around 20 people had filtered through Cobblestone Farm over the three-hour period.

The time for submission of written comments on the environmental assessment has been extended from April 12 to April 19 at 5 p.m. Emails can be sent to lamrouexm@michigan.gov.

In the context of the controversy about the runway extension – which has played out at Ann Arbor city council meetings over the course of the last year – the public hearing was somewhat subdued.

Who We Met

On arrival outside the barn, The Chronicle met Rick Olson, who had already touched base inside at the open house and was heading for the parking lot where his pickup truck was parked. The truck had a large campaign sign in the bed – Olson is a Republican candidate for state representative in the 55th district.

Olson stopped to chat with Andrew McGill, who was also headed to the public hearing. McGill has spoken against the proposed runway extension at multiple city council meetings over the last year.

After spending a bit over an hour at the open house, The Chronicle left to find a small cluster of people mingling outside in the warm breezy evening air. Among them was Kathe Wunderlich, with the Committee for Preserving Community Quality, which can be considered organized opposition to the runway extension. She was talking with Barbara Perkins, who served three three-year terms on the city’s airport advisory committee – she was first appointed by Mayor Albert H. Wheeler, who served from 1975-78.

Perkins told The Chronicle that she lived in the Georgetown area, which meant that the flight path for aircraft using the Ann Arbor municipal airport went right over her neighborhood. She recalled how the proposed airport runway extension had been a controversial issue dating back to the 1970s.

Perkins said she didn’t consider the open house format to be a proper public hearing – there was no opportunity to hold forth publicly. [Verbal comments were taken in a 1-1 session with a court reporter.] In past decades, Perkins said, over a hundred people had shown up and spoken about the runway extension at public hearings in the city hall chambers.

Who We Missed

Perkins and Wunderlich both had words of praise for current county commissioner and Ann Arbor resident Leah Gunn, who has opposed the possible airport extension over the decades. Email exchanges between Margie Teall (Ward 4) and then councilmember Leigh Greden at the city council’s March 16, 2009 meeting show that Gunn’s current opposition to the proposed runway extension is considered significant by Teall:

——————–
From: Leah Gunn
Sent: Monday, March 16, 2009 3:31 PM
To: Hieftje, John; Briere, Sabra; Smith, Sandi; Rapundalo, Stephen; Derezinski, Tony; Greden, Leigh; Taylor, Christopher; Teall, Margie; Higgins, Marcia; Higgins, Marcia; Anglin, Mike; Hohnke, Carsten
Subject: airport expansion

I have placed in your mailboxes a memo from me concerning airport expansion. I have also attached it here for your convenience, without the supporting newspaper articles.
You need to look VERY carefully at what you are doing, or you may be stuck paying for something for the next twenty years that you will have trouble justifying. There has never been a good time to lengthen the runway, and I believe that you have been given misleading information by certain advocates.

…

Leah

——————–
From: Teall, Margie
Sent: Monday, March 16, 2009 7:26 PM
To: Greden, Leigh
Subject: FW: airport expansion

What do you think? She is going to be very upset with Marcia and me. (She already is.)

——————–
From: Greden, Leigh
Sent: Monday, March 16, 2009 7:28 PM
To: Teall, Margie
Subject: RE: airport expansion

I sent it to Mark. I think the bottom line is bigger planes: can they come or not? If so, we’ve got a problem. If not, this entire organized opposition campaign is nothing but hot air.

——————–
From: Teall, Margie
Sent: Monday, March 16, 2009 7:37 PM
To: Greden, Leigh
Subject: RE: airport expansion

And I would say nothing but hot air, except for Leah and Bob Gunn…that worries me more.

——————–
From: Greden, Leigh
Sent: Monday, March 16, 2009 7:47 PM
To: Teall, Margie
Subject: RE: airport expansion

Leah’s email contained the boilerplate language. If she’s right, they’re all right. If she’s wrong, they’re all wrong.

——————–
From: Teall, Margie
Sent: Monday, March 16, 2009 7:56 PM
To: Greden, Leigh
Subject: RE: airport expansion

I don’t think it will matter to her.

——————–
From: Greden, Leigh
Sent: Monday, March 16, 2009 7:58 PM
To: Teall, Margie
Subject:RE: airport expansion

Probably right, but at least we can look consistent and appropriate.

It turns out that Gunn also attended the March 31, 2010 open house – The Chronicle left just before she arrived. In a follow-up email, Gunn concurred with Perkins’ view of the public hearing’s open house format, calling it a “sham.”

Open House Format for Public Hearing

The open house format at Cobblestone Farm consisted of a series of posters on easels positioned on the perimeter of the room, with government officials and consultants scattered throughout, available to introduce the content of the posters to visitors and to answer questions. Comment boxes were available for written statements. A court reporter was available to take down spoken comments. The criticism  about the format was based on the idea that there was not an opportunity for people to deliver remarks to an assembled public audience.

Comment box at the March 31 open house at Cobblestone Farm.

Molly Lamrouex, with the aeronautics division of the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT), told The Chronicle that the format was a standard one, which had been used for the six years she’d been at that job. The Federal Aviation Administration had concurred with the open house format for that public hearing, she said. She added that the citizens advisory committee (CAC), which was formed as part of the process for the environmental assessment, had not raised objections to that format.

Voices among members of the  public in support of the runway extension over the last year have been somewhat rare, but not completely absent. One possible explanation is that people who support the extension are not entirely comfortable speaking publicly in a room filled with organized opposition.

In that context, Andrew McGill – part of the organized opposition – discussed with The Chronicle the public hearing format. McGill allowed that it could be daunting to speak in a room filled with other speakers who mostly disagree with your position. This is part of the rationale for a format that allows people to convey their views essentially in private to a court reporter. He also agreed people should be able to express their point of view without any kind of harassment. He concluded that both alternatives should be offered – a chance to speak to a public audience, as well as an opportunity to convey a point of view more privately.

The written comment submission form offered at the Cobblestone Farm public hearing specifies that name and address are not required.

The Draft Report

Much of the basic material in the draft report was presented in poster format at the open house.

Build Alternatives: No Build

Jon Von Duinen, of the consulting firm URS, walked The Chronicle through the basics of the four “build alternatives,” displayed on two posters. The “no build” alternative is one that would not change anything. On that scenario, there’s no environmental impact to assess. However, leaving the runway at its current length of 3,500 feet – instead of lengthening it to 4,300 feet – would not meet the need that has been identified in the draft environmental assessment report:

The existing runway length does not allow for the critical aircraft (B-II) to operate at their design capabilities without weight restrictions.

Here, “critical aircraft” is a technical term, which does not mean, as the phrase might suggest, “most important airplane.” The term refers to the most demanding kind of aircraft that regularly uses the airport. And “regularly use” means that it’s a kind of aircraft that is expected to have at least 500 operations (takeoffs and landings) at the airport per year.

For the Ann Arbor airport, the “critical aircraft” was determined to be a B-II. From the draft environmental assessment report:

A recent Airport User Survey has confirmed that the critical aircraft classification for  ARB is “B-II Small Aircraft” (MDOT, 2009). Aircraft in this category have runway  approach speeds between 91 and 120 knots, wingspans between 49- and 79-feet, and  maximum certificated takeoff weights of 12,500 lbs or less.

In the appendices to the environmental assessment, the case is laid out for consideration of B-II as the critical aircraft for Ann Arbor’s airport. It’s based on data from 2007 that is a combination of FlightAware information, showing 507 total operations of B-II aircraft, plus information from other sources that brings the total to 760. Those other sources include AvFuel, an Ann Arbor company that bases a Citation 560 Excel jet at the airport, and reported 211 operations in 2007.

Screen shot of FlightAware realtime flight tracking. KARB is the Ann Arbor municipal airport. (Image links to live tracking site.)

Overall, the number of operations across all aircraft types at the Ann Arbor airport has shown a decline over the last two decades. [FAA operations data is available online.]

From 1991-2001, there were at least 100,000 operations at the airport in every year except for 1996, when the figure dipped to 99,590. Since 2001, the number has declined most years, and by 2007 the total number of operations had dropped to 72,853. By 2009 it had further dropped to 57,004, a 22% decrease over the most recent two-year span.

If the 22% decrease is applied to the 760 operations of B-II aircraft in 2007 and projected to 2009 data, it would translate to 585 operations, which still exceeds the minimum FAA threshold of 500 to consider B-II aircraft to be the “critical aircraft.”

The FAA circular on recommended runway lengths for different kind of aircraft provides guidance based on altitude of the airport and temperatures during the hottest period of the year. Ann Arbor is 829 feet above sea level and has average July temperature of  83 degrees.

According a FAQ provided on the city of Ann Arbor website, the increase in runway length to 4,300 feet would not allow larger kinds of aircraft to use the airport than already do – an increase to 5,000 feet would be necessary for that. But the increase to 4,300 feet would allow the kinds of aircraft currently using the Ann Arbor airport to operate without weight restrictions.

Allowing the current kinds of aircraft to operate there without weight restrictions would, according to the report, lead to an increase in the amount of interstate commerce to the Ann Arbor area.

Although improvements in safety are cited throughout the report as a benefit to the runway extension, there is not a safety finding that is driving a requirement that the runway be extended. From the report:

Although justification for the proposed project has been substantiated according to current MDOT and FAA standards associated with runway length recommendations, neither agency requires that the runway be extended. It is ultimately – and entirely – the decision of the city of Ann Arbor whether to not to proceed with the development of the project.

Build Alternative: Build 1, 2 and 3

The first alternative considered in the environmental assessment was one in which the runway was rotated 5 degrees counterclockwise, with an 800-foot extension to the southwest. The idea behind Build 1, explained Von Duinen, was to give as much consideration as aeronautically possible to the subdivision west of Lohr Road.

In terms of the environmental impact, that’s an alternative that would have required clearing 15 acres of trees, and the enclosure of 660 additional feet of a stream inside a pipe. It would have also had an impact on 1.3 acres of wetland, and required the removal of three buildings. Due to those impacts, that alternative was not recommended.

Jon Von Duinen, points out the location of the control tower at the Ann Arbor municipal airport.

Build 2, said Von Duinen, was the alternative that was the simplest to implement from a construction point of view. It entailed adding 800 feet to the southwest end of the runway, but leaving the angle of the runway the same. That alternative was rejected on the basis of its failure to meet the purpose and need of the project.

Build 2 left two issues unaddressed. One is the lack of a sightline between the control tower and the northeast end of the runway. The second unaddressed issue is the short distance between the northeast end of the runway and State Street [which becomes State Road], running north-south on the east side of the airport property. The current configuration meets requirements, but if State Road were to be widened, as suggested in a 2006 State Road corridor study, the end of the runway would be too close to the road to provide adequate height clearance between road traffic and aircraft.

Build 3, which is the preferred alternative in the report, would address the end-of-runway-control-tower sightline issue by moving the northeast end of the runway 150 feet to the southwest. This would also address the State Road issue.

However, Build 3 requires that the effective 150-foot shortening of the northeast end of the runway be compensated by adding 950 feet – not just 800 feet – to the southwest end of the runway.

If a “run up” area on the Build 3 scenario were built at the end of the newly extended runway, it would be that much closer to the residential subdivision on the west side of Lohr Road. [The "run up" area is where aircraft bring their engines up to full power to test that everything is in working order.] So the “run up” area in Build 3 is proposed not at the end of the new, extended runway, but rather at the spot where the existing runway ends – to reduce the potential impact of noise on the surrounding area.

Noise

The noise analysis for the study was performed by Daniel Botto of URS, who works out of Florida. Chatting with The Chronicle, he allowed that he enjoyed his four days in Ann Arbor working on the project, but that he was not tempted to relocate here from Tampa.

Botto said his work depends on computer modeling of noise data for a particular airport configuration.  The information loaded into the model includes recorded noise data from various kinds of aircraft, runway locations and angles, flight tracks of aircraft, and average daily use by different kinds of aircraft. Botto indicated that for busier airports, the flight track data would be drawn from radar records, but for the Ann Arbor study, the flight tracks were estimated and then confirmed for general accuracy by control tower staff in Ann Arbor.

The relevant statistic for noise modeling around airports is the day-night average sound level (DNL). It’s described this way in the draft environmental assessment:

DNL is a 24-hour time-weighted-average noise metric expressed in A-weighted decibels (dBA) that accounts for the noise levels of all individual aircraft events, the number of times those events occur, and the time of day which they occur. In order to represent the added intrusiveness of sounds occurring during nighttime hours (10:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m.), DNL penalizes, or weights, events occurring during the nighttime periods by 10 dBA. This is due to the increased sensitivity to noise during normal sleeping hours and because ambient (without aircraft) sound levels during nighttime are typically about 10 dB lower than during daytime hours.

The conclusion of the environmental assessment was that the Build 3 alternative would not cause the levels above the threshold of 65 DNL to extend beyond the airport property.

Birds

At its March 15, 2010 meeting, the city council authorized payment for the environmental assessment, and Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) asked for clarification from Ann Arbor airport manager Andrew Kulhanek about the absence of Canadian Canada geese in the report – an issue that had been raised by Andrew McGill during public commentary. Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) drew out the fact that the report does not seek to inventory all the birds in the vicinity of the airport, but rather to identify which, if any, endangered species of birds are in the vicinity of the airport.

At the Cobblestone Farm public hearing, MDOT’s Molly Lamrouex confirmed that understanding. The section of the report that addresses endangered species of birds identifies two species:

Henslow’s sparrow, state endangered, (Ammodramus henslowii) and Grasshopper sparrow, state special concern, (Ammodramus savannarum) are known to occur on or in the vicinity of the area. The presence of these species has been confirmed by the Audubon Society during their annual counts at ARB over the last three years.

The Build 3 alternative, recommended in the report, is not projected to have a negative impact on the two species:

ARB revises the boundaries of this mowing annually with the Audubon Society, based on their most current bird count data. There would be no grading within agreed upon restricted mowing areas during the breeding season for either species which extends through late August for Henslow’s sparrow and mid-July for Grasshopper sparrow.

However, there are other parts of the report that include field observations of various wildlife that are not endangered species. And it’s these field observations that McGill points to when questioning why Canada geese are not mentioned in the report, when they are prevalent enough to warrant goose-crossing signs on some of the roads surrounding the airport. From the report’s description of “Biotic Communities”:

Several examples of wildlife were observed, including robins (Turdus migratorius), goldfinch (Carduelis tistis), purple martins (Progyne subis), killdeer (Charadrius viciferus), and a mating pair of redtail hawks (Buteo jamaicensis). Other observations include evidence of rodent tunneling (field mice or voles) and pheasants (Phasianus colchicus) that were heard calling. Airport staff stated that coyote (Canis latrans) and white tail deer (Odocoileus virginianus) have been observed on the airport property as well as wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo). A comprehensive list of all the bird species observed by the Audubon Society at ARB is included in Appendix F.

The Audubon Society observed-species list in the appendix, which includes several common varieties of birds – like the American robin – does not include Canada geese.

Next Steps

Written comment on the draft environmental assessment can be submitted through April 19 to:

Molly Lamrouex
Airports Division
MDOT Bureau of Aeronautics and Freight Services
2700 Port Lansing Road
Lansing, MI 48906
lamrouexm@michigan.gov
FAX: 517-886-0366

Once all the comments from the public have been compiled, the issues raised in that commentary will be evaluated and a response to those issues will be prepared. After review of the response to comments and the draft report are evaluated by the FAA and MDOT, the final environmental assessment can be printed.

The final assessment will be distributed to all the various resource agencies like the state Department of Natural Resources and Environment, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. All the surrounding local municipalities will also receive a copy.

The creation of the final environmental assessment does not clear the actual project for takeoff. The project itself would be subject to authorization by the Ann Arbor city council, which just recently, at its Feb 1, 2010 meeting, struck the airport runway extension from the city’s capital improvements plan (CIP). The council adopted the CIP, without the runway extension, at its Feb. 16, 2010 meeting.