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CHALLENGES ASSOCIATED WITH BUILDING NEW RUNWAYS
Thursday, October 5, 2000
House of Representatives, Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure,
Subcommittee on Aviation, Washington, D.C.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 9:30 a.m. in room 2167, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John J. Duncan, Jr. [chairman of the subcommittee] presiding.
Mr. DUNCAN. I would like to go ahead and call this hearing of the Aviation Subcommittee to order. This will be our next to last hearing of this Congress.
Last week we held a hearing on airline delays. At that hearing, several witnesses testified that the lack of runway capacity was one of the main reasons for the delays. And I think the subject of this hearing was summed up just a few weeks ago on September 12th, in USA Today, by a story with the headline, Can Gridlock Be Cured by Expanding Airports. And that is really what we're here to look at today.
In its capacity enhancement plan, the FAA says that 27 airports are already seriously congested, including the 3 airports testifying here today. By 2007, the FAA expects this number to increase to 31.
As we all know, air travel continues to experience phenomenal growth. In the last decade, aircraft departures increased by about 30 percent, airline passengers increased by 40 percent, and air cargo increased by an astounding 90 percent. Yet during that time, that is, in the decade of the 1990's, the Department of Transportation says that only five new runways were added at large airports. These new runways were in Las Vegas, Detroit, Salt Lake City, Philadelphia and Dallas-Fort Worth.
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Just last week, another runway was opened in Memphis. In the past, the problem has been money. Last year, the Wall Street Journal reported that 59 airports had proposed new runways, but many were held up for lack of funding.
Now, I think we have begun to close the funding gap. AIR–21, which is just about to go into effect with the start of this fiscal year, will pump over $3 billion per year into airport improvements. It also gives airports more flexibility to raise money locally, with new or added passenger facility charges.
But despite the progress made in AIR–21 with more entitlement funding and other expanded opportunities for airports, we cannot, of course, expect immediate results. You can't built runways overnight.
For example, Detroit began planning for two new runways in the mid–1980's. One was completed in 1993, but the other is not expected until the end of 2001. Cincinnati started work on a new runway in 1992, but it won't be completed until 2005. Orlando expects its fourth runway to be completed in 2003, 15 years after the FAA first approved it. And Phoenix is scheduled to open its new runway today, three years after construction began and 30 years after it first appeared on their planning documents.
And of course, I well remember the hearing we had in Seattle in 1996, where the subject was the construction of a controversial third runway. We held a hearing and were met with approximately 1,000 demonstrators. I do not believe I've chaired a hearing where the feelings ran much stronger.
The purpose of this hearing is to help us better understand why it takes so long and why it costs so much to build a new runway and to try to determine if there are ways to handle these improvements, these very necessary improvements in airport infrastructure, in a better way.
I've said several times to this Committee that it's almost politically impossible to build new airports. And yet I can tell you that it's sometimes just as difficult to expand existing airports. However, that is something that is very necessary if we're going to avoid the gridlock in the sky that the National Civil Aviation Review Commission predicted in 1997 was going to happen, shortly after the return of the century.
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The GAO recently issued an excellent report discussing some of the obstacles that airports must overcome. This report cited such environmental issues as aircraft noise, air quality and water quality. We will hear from Dr. Gerald Dillingham of the GAO who will discuss this report in more detail.
But we also want to hear from those who are on the front lines every day who experience the problems first-hand and can describe them to us and maybe make suggestions that will help the process. For that, we have airport directors from Memphis, Las Vegas and Boston. Each of them has dealt with or is in the process of dealing with many of the challenges that other airports around the country face. We look forward to learning from their experiences.
We are also fortunate to have Mary Griffin from San Mateo County, California. She can give us the perspective of those who live near the airport.
We appreciate so much that all of you have been willing to come here and some of you to travel such a long distance to be with us today and to take time out from your busy schedules to be here.
In AIR–21, there is a little-noticed provision that directs the FAA to study ways to streamline the environmental process with a view toward easing the challenges that block new airport construction, because many of these delays that we face are based on that.
The results of that study are due next April. Perhaps this hearing can help shed some light on the issues the FAA must address in that study.
So once again, I appreciate everyone being here, and I now recognize the Ranking Member, my good friend, Mr. Lipinski.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing today.
Although adding new runways to airports is not the only way to increase the capacity of airports, it is a very significant way to increase capacity. And as we learned in last weeks' hearings on airline delays, the lack of airport capacity is one of the many factors contributing to the delays in today's system.
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In addition, in our hearing the week before last, on September 21st, on Stage Four aircraft, we also learned that noise and other community concerns are real issue that will impact the future of aviation in this Nation and around the world.
Although we do have a national aviation system, and airport capacity does impact this national system, we cannot overlook the significance of local issues and local concerns. While it is unreasonable for construction project to take more than a decade to be completed, it is also unreasonable to exclude the community from the process of constructing runways at airports. What we need is a streamlined process that finds a balance between the national needs to improve aviation infrastructure and the local needs to protect the environment and overall quality of life.
As I have mentioned several times before, I live only eight blocks from Midway Airport, one of the fastest growing airports in the Nation. I know very well the community issues associated with living near an airport. I hear from my constituents about noise and environmental concerns on a regular basis.
I also understand the importance of the airport to my Congressional district. Midway Airport is the economic engine of the Third Congressional District of Illinois. My constituents understand that as well. And we all want to see Midway Airport continue to grow and prosper. That balance needs to be recognized at a national level as well. Community concerns must be addressed. But airports must also be allowed to grow and prosper.
I look forward to hearing from our knowledgeable witnesses here today about the challenges associated with building new runways, and how Congress may help airports and communities address these challenges.
Again, I thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Lipinski.
Do any other members wish to make an opening statement at this time, or have any comments? We do have a Republican Conference meeting going on, and we'll be joined by other members later. But we will go ahead and start with our witnesses.
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And we have a very distinguished panel here this morning. We are joined by Mr. Gerald L. Dillingham, who is Director of Physical Infrastructure for the United States General Accounting Office, who has been a witness before this Subcommittee on several occasions. Mr. Larry Cox, who is President and CEO of the Memphis-Shelby County Airport Authority. Mr. Randall Walker, who is Director of the Department of Aviation for Clark County in Nevada. And Ms. Virginia Buckingham, Executive Director and CEO of the Massachusetts Port Authority. And the Honorable Mary Griffin, who is Supervisor of the County of San Mateo, California, and Chairperson of the San Francisco International Airport Community Roundtable.
We are very pleased to have each of these witnesses with us at this time, and we will proceed in the order the witnesses are listed on the call of the hearing. Mr. Dillingham, that means we will proceed first with you.
TESTIMONY OF GERALD L. DILLINGHAM, DIRECTOR, PHYSICAL INFRASTRUCTURE, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE; LARRY D. COX, PRESIDENT AND CEO, MEMPHIS-SHELBY COUNTY AIRPORT AUTHORITY; RANDALL WALKER, DIRECTOR, DEPARTMENT OF AVIATION, CLARK COUNTY, NEVADA; VIRGINIA BUCKINGHAM, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND CEO, MASSACHUSETTS PORT AUTHORITY, ACCOMPANIED BY TOM KENTON, AVIATION DIRECTOR, LOGAN INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT; AND MARY GRIFFIN, SUPERVISOR, COUNTY OF SAN MATEO, CALIFORNIA, AND CHAIRPERSON, SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT/ COMMUNITY ROUNDTABLE
Mr. DILLINGHAM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Lipinski, members of the Subcommittee.
The focus of our testimony this morning are the challenges inherent in trying to increase or enhance airport capacity through the maintenance of existing runways and the construction of new runways. Our testimony is based on a system-wide runway condition analysis that we completed in 1998, and our recently completed survey of the Nation's 50 busiest airports, and extensive interviews with stakeholders regarding the environmental challenges they face.
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From our runway condition analysis, we found that although most of the runways at the nation's larger airports are in generally good condition, a small but significant proportion of existing runways need immediate attention. This is particularly the case for general aviation and non-hub airports. And it illustrates the old adage of, ''an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.'' By that I mean that our work has shown that rehabilitating runways that are in poor condition might cost two to three times as much as rehabilitating runways in good condition, because of the more expensive rehab method that would be required.
The major challenge that FAA faces in this area is the lack of detailed information about runway conditions. This is information that FAA could use to prioritize airport funding requests and therefor maximize its investment in existing capacity. Maintenance and rehabilitation of existing capacity is but one element in the equation.
Another element focuses on the need to build new capacity. Our survey of airport officials found that the challenges associated with building new capacity principally comes from two sources. The first source is the communities that are adjacent to and in the flight path of airports, which are primarily concerned with the effects of noise and air quality. The second source is meeting the various state and Federal environmental requirements that are associated with airport construction.
With regard to the community related challenges, airports, airlines, and FAA have all made efforts to mitigate the effects of airport operations on communities. Airlines have modified their aircraft to be quieter. Many airports have established noise monitoring and abatement programs, and airport and community groups. FAA has redesigned air space and made operational changes to lessen the number of persons that are under the flight path, and provided millions of dollars in noise abatement funds.
These types of interventions have met with varying degrees of success. For example, in San Francisco, the airport authority and community have established a community roundtable that seems to be an excellent vehicle for the community and the airport to work together on issues of mutual concern.
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On the other hand, in the New York metropolitan area, with its three major airports and host of smaller airports, most attempts to find common ground have been less than fully successful.
We can see another example of the community challenges in what airport officials said in our survey about their efforts at noise abatement. The majority of our respondents reported that more than half of their noise complaints have come from areas that FAA has designated as compatible with airport operations. That is to say, the complaints came from outside the noise footprint, where Federal monies are generally not available for abatement.
This suggests that despite the mitigating efforts of stakeholders, citizens' concerns persist and are likely to increase as airports seek to expand.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to turn now to the challenges posed by State and Federal regulations and requirements. The bottom line in this area is that satisfying State and Federal environmental requirements for airport expansion projects can be unnecessarily lengthy, sometimes overlapping, and can delay airports arguably without adding commensurate benefits.
In one example from our survey, a respondent told us about a situation in which a consensus was developed under Federal environmental processes that reduced the number of feasible runway options from 17 to 4. This mean that the airport would only need to perform an environmental review of the four options.
The State process, which occurred after the Federal process, required the airport to reconsider all 17 options. This action lengthened the decision making process considerably. In other examples, our respondents told us about having to negotiate with three different Government agencies, or several different levels of Government, to obtain wetland permits, even though in their opinion, the extra negotiations do not add environmental value.
We found different types of concerns when we talked to stakeholders about meeting air quality requirements. They said that EPA's regulations for general conformity under the Clean Air Act are very broad, since they are designed to accommodate a diverse group of facilities, everything from ski resorts to coal mines. What happens is that this leaves airports without the specificity they need to fully understand and meet their responsibilities.
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There is also a lack of institutional knowledge and experience available to some FAA and EPA regional staff in applying the Clean Air Act requirements to airports, in part, because these types of reviews are done so infrequently. Some airport officials expressed a concern that as a result of these circumstances, they may undertake analyses that are more complex and more costly than necessary. And furthermore, they believe that the situation could worsen significantly, as they see emissions and air quality becoming increasingly important in the future.
So where do we go from here? As you have heard, all the major stakeholders are involved in efforts to address the challenges we have outlined. We know that FAA is evaluating various ways in which it can obtain and use better information regarding runway condition, to get a bigger bang for its rehabilitation dollar. Perhaps the most comprehensive and needed intervention is the provision in AIR–21 which directed the Secretary of Transportation to conduct a study which focuses on the nature and extent of coordination among Federal and State agencies, and the role of public involvement in the conduct of environmental review, and in the planning and approval of airport improvement projects.
Mr. Chairman, we believe that Congress has provided FAA the tools in terms of the provisions and funding in AIR–21. With these tools, the results of the ongoing initiatives and the continued combined efforts of Congress, FAA, and the other stakeholders, we believe that this is a very good start to addressing this aspect of increasing and enhancing airport capacity and avoiding gridlock.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Dillingham.
Mr. Cox.
Mr. COX. Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to appear before this Subcommittee today to testify on a subject which is near and dear to my heart, airport runway capacity. I want to thank you and all the members and staff of this Subcommittee for the outstanding work you have done on behalf of the aviation industry, and especially for the airport community as represented by AIR–21, enacted into law earlier this year.
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The Memphis-Shelby County Airport Authority is the owner and operator of three airports in Memphis, Tennessee. Memphis International Airport is the commercial service airport for Memphis and the mid-south region, which includes parts of Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois and Kentucky. Memphis International Airport is the largest air cargo airport in the world, and is home to FedEx Airlines, which operates their world super hub at the airport. Memphis has held this number one ranking for all eight years that such statistics have been compiled. Total cargo handled exceeds 2.5 million metric tons each year.
Memphis International is also a growing passenger hub for Northwest Airlines, which has recently seen the largest single day expansion in the 75 year history of the airline. Future growth of passenger activities seems certain, due to the growth of the mid-south region and the building reputation of Memphis International Airport as a hassle-free connecting airport. And it has earned the distinction of being the number one on-time airport of the top 40 airports within the continental United States for the past 12 months.
Memphis International's success can be attributed to a can-do attitude in partnership with the Federal Government and the airlines and other users of the airport. The airport authority has made every effort to be proactive in anticipating the needs of the mid-south region's air service and facilities. Despite our proactive leadership and pursuit of infrastructure improvements at our airport, it has been a long and sometimes painful process. I will attempt today to briefly explain the Memphis experience and provide our successes and problems and conclude with suggestions to improve the process.
Over 16 years ago, the Memphis-Shelby County Airport Authority began the long process to add infrastructure to accommodate anticipated growth at Memphis International Airport. The planning processes have included two master plans, two FAA industry capacity plans, one FAR Part 150 noise compatibility plan, one environmental assessment and one environmental impact statement. The initial master plan was begun in 1984 and completed in 1986, and included the development of an FAA approved Part 150 noise compatibility program to ensure that needed capacity projects were tied to needed noise mitigation efforts.
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The master plan included the construction of a third parallel runway, the reconstruction and extension of an existing runway, the constructions of new and expanded taxiways, terminal building expansion, improvements to ground transportation facilities, and the continued expansion of air cargo facilities. An environmental assessment of the desired master plan began in 1987 to identify and quantify impacts of noise, water quality and air quality and other impacts to communities surrounding the airport.
Due to the requirement for multi-agency reviews by numerous local, State and Federal agencies, the environmental assessment took five years of effort. Each agency worked at their own pace, often with conflicting viewpoints on actual impacts and needed remediation. The most difficult issues were aircraft noise and the determination of what constituted wetlands and how best to mitigate wetlands to be disturbed by future airfield construction.
Upon completion of the environmental assessment in 1991, the airport authority began the environmental impact statement. The FAA required extensive reviews and supplemental studies to be done as a result of comments from the EPA and other local agencies. The attorneys for the FAA were particularly deliberative of the EIS as they anticipated there could be a legal challenge of the EIS by affected parties.
A record of decision was finally issued in May 1993, some seven years after the beginning of the environmental review process. What is interesting to note is that at no time in the process did the Memphis-Shelby County airport authority oppose or attempt to avoid any mitigation efforts recommended or required by local, State or Federal agencies. The extensive time delays were attributed to lengthy review by the agencies and to disagreement among and between the agencies as to the appropriate mitigation actions and the apparent lack of high priority by the various agencies to streamline and expedite the environmental review process.
Another problem we faced during this 16 year process involved the financing of the projects. Financing major capital projects has always been challenging, but the 1990's provided special challenges. While PFCs provided a new source of funding capacity projects at U.S. airports, it created a local dispute between our major tenants, Northwest Airlines, and FedEx Airlines, over the need for certain airfield projects and whether PFCs were the best sort of funding for those projects.
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This dispute was intensified by the severe financial difficulties experienced by the passenger airlines in the early 1990's, particularly Northwest, who considered bankruptcy during that period. After several years of intense negotiations, it was determined that AIP grants and revenue bonds funded by landing fees would be the primary source of financing. Unfortunately, the AIP program, as we all clearly remember, became a somewhat unreliable source of funding, due to the difficulties in obtaining consistent, long term authorizations for AIP and reduced levels of appropriations due to problems with the unified budget.
In order to avoid additional delays in construction projects, the airport authority was forced to rely more on private financing than on AIP, thus raising financing costs and landing fees to dangerously high levels. Notwithstanding all of the challenges and difficulties encountered during the preliminaries leading up to the construction phase of the project, there have been a number of successes. The construction of the new parallel runway began in September 1993, and was completed in June 1996. Construction and extension of existing parallel runway began in 1997 and was completed on September 22nd of this year.
It took 16 years to complete these needed capacity enhancement projects, at a total cost of $250 million plus another $150 million for noise mitigation projects. It is unfortunate that 10 years of the process represented planning and environmental reviews, while it took less than 6 years to complete actual construction. This must change, if our country ever expects to provide the needed capacity to fulfill the demands of air commerce.
I therefore have several suggestions. One, the Federal Government must become an advocate for airport capacity needed at key locations in the Nation. Do not leave these decisions solely to the local community, as they affect air travel in all communities.
The Federal Government, two, the Federal Government should exercise Federal preemption on environmental review and approvals on major capacity projects. Three, the Federal Government should consider establishing a capacity czar in the White House to streamline processes and reduce delays in capacity projects critical to the national air transportation system.
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Four, funding for airport capacity should be a top priority in the future with increased authorization levels and annual appropriations of airport improvement program funds and additional increases in the cap on the PFCs for airfield capacity projects. And finally, the Federal Government should become more involved in land use around airports and encourage the acquisition of land in advance of need, as local opposition to airport capacity projects often centers on aircraft noise and incompatible land use.
Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear here today.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Cox.
Mr. Walker?
Mr. WALKER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On behalf of the Clark County Department of Aviation, which owns and operates Las Vegas McCarran International Airport, the seventh busiest airport in the country, I appreciate the opportunity to talk about our issues today.
I want to highlight today the significant opposition and lengthy delays we are facing in our efforts to build a second airport in the Ivanpah Valley, 30 miles south of Las Vegas, which will be added to serve southern Nevada's needs in the future decades.
The McCarran International Airport passenger traffic since 1990 has grown 75 percent. And we have not stopped growing. So far this year to date, we have grown 9.9 percent on an annual basis.
About half the visitors who come to southern Nevada now come by air. Air traffic into Las Vegas has statistically followed the construction of hotel rooms. Last year, for example, we added 12,000 hotel rooms to our inventory. We estimate, based on a regression analysis for each hotel room added to the community, 320 additional visitors come by air to Las Vegas. So we are anticipating an additional 3.85 million passengers, based on the hotel rooms that have recently been constructed.
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We have four air carrier capable runways at McCarran, and that is all we will ever have room for. Fortunately, with our existing four runways, there is sufficient airfield capacity to allow for additional short and mid-term growth. However, once the airport exceeds 705,000 annual operations, we're currently at 550,000 annual operations, demands on our runway and taxiway system will produce cumulative delays that exceed an average of 20 minutes per aircraft flight operation.
In terms of airline economics, Las Vegas is a low yield market. This means that most of the passengers that fly to Las Vegas do so on discounted leisure travel or advanced book tickets, such as those who come for conventions. There are fewer higher priced business seats than sold in the normal business markets.
It is therefore easy to understand why airlines that serve Las Vegas are very sensitive to the incremental increase in costs which results from departure and arrival delays. Increased delays means a higher operational cost, attributed to wasted fuel burn on taxiways, added crew time and additional delays at connecting airports.
As the operator of McCarran Airport, we have to be sensitive so that delay costs do not make it difficult for airlines to add new service or to maintain their existing service levels. For us to maintain the viability of long term airline service to Las Vegas, we need to build an alternative primary commercial service airport. Most of the air space to the north of McCarran is under the control of the Department of Defense due to the ever-increasing military operations at Nellis Air Force Base. This has limited our search for a new airport to the area south of Las Vegas. The only viable site that has adequate air space is about 30 miles south of McCarran in the Ivanpah Valley.
Ivanpah Valley is a remote, dry, desert area that provides the best site for a full precision instrument approach with minimal air space conflicts with air traffic at McCarran. This site, with the potential for a north-south complex of parallel runways, is unusual, because it is both flat and devoid of mountainous terrain off the ends of the runways. And if you have been to Las Vegas and seen the mountains, you'd understand why that is important.
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It is also located in close proximity to Interstate 15 and the Union Pacific Railroad, which will enhance intermodal transportation and cargo opportunities. And if you have visited the site, or were to visit the site, you would agree that it is literally in the middle of nowhere.
It is our plan to develop this airport as needed by our growth at McCarran. It is likely that the first developments to move to this new airport would be air cargo and charter operations with scheduled air service eventually following as our traffic grows at McCarran.
Over 90 percent of Clark County is owned by the Federal Government, including the Ivanpah Valley site. When we approached the Bureau of Land Management about the need to acquire the Ivanpah site, we were told that they would have to amend their Federal land management plan to reclassify the property from retention in Federal ownership to the disposal category.
BLM was reluctant to do so, because the Federal Land Management and Policy Act would require an extensive public process as well as consultation under the Endangered Species Act and an environmental impact statement would be required. Because it took BLM 10 years to finalize the existing land management plan, they recommended that we go to our Nevada delegation for help.
Recognizing the importance of air travel to the tourism economy of Las Vegas, our Nevada Congressional delegation, which I'd like to thank each and every one of, unitedly introduced a bill in the 105th session of Congress directing the Secretary of the Interior to sell the Ivanpah land to Clark County. Unfortunately, the Administration threw up numerous objections, raising concerns about mineral rights, off-road vehicle uses, desert tortoise habitat, failure to follow the administrative process to amend the land use plan, and wanted us to have two EISs to prove we had selected the right site. And the bill died.
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Mr. Chairman, in this Congress, the bill was reintroduced in an amended form to address as best we could these and other issues. In the 106th Congress, the opposition to the Ivanpah airport grew even stronger. The National Park Service became aware of the bill, and the issues of flights over the Mojave National Preserve, which is 20 miles south of Ivanpah into California, became the principal issue.
This actually surprised us, because according to the FAA data, the Mojave National Preserve is already impacted heavily by aircraft overflights. It is located beneath one of the world's most concentrated air traffic corridors. Air traffic in and out of Los Angeles basin airports from cities to the north and east fly over the Mojave Preserve.
There are in excess of 400,000 operations on the V–21 and V–394 airways over the Mojave Preserve, but roughly 6,000 feet above the preserve. There are 147,000 operations over the Mojave Preserve annually at altitudes of 10,000 to 16,000 feet. Additionally, there are a number of military fields located in California impacting the Mojave Preserve, and there are 38,000 military operations flown annually over the preserve at much lower levels.
Our own analysis showed that aircraft departing the Ivanpah Valley would be one mile high, in the worst case analysis, before they reached the boundary of the Mojave Preserve. Nevertheless, we were forced to add language to the bill which directs the Secretary of Transportation, after consultation with the Secretary of the Interior, to develop air space management plans which avoids, to the maximum extent possible, overflights of the preserve.
We have studied the air space in the area and believe this can be accomplished. I developed a map which showed how flights in and out of the Ivanpah Valley can avoid the preserve. They were not satisfied, and neither were the growing number of national environmental organizations who lined up against the bill. They want a no growth buffer around all limited public use lands.
Mr. Chairman, we developed a map which place a 20 mile buffer which is approximately the distance of Ivanpah from the Desert Mojave Preserve around all of the Federal wilderness areas, national use of the park and all of the National Forest areas. We have that map up, and it shows California and Nevada, Arizona and Utah. And as you can see, there is literally no place left in an urban area, and certainly not in southern Nevada, where an airport could be built given the 20 mile buffer criteria.
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I did not personally fully understand the perspective of the environmentalists until I appeared on a local TV program with the representative of the Sierra Club to discuss the Ivanpah Airport. As an alternative to the Ivanpah Airport, he suggested a fifth runway at McCarran, a concept already examined by the airport and rejected because it requires the condemning and leveling of existing neighborhoods, businesses and an industrial park, and would subject thousands of homes to aircraft operations which currently receive little or no aircraft noise.
This individual felt that it would be a better alternative, this impact would be a better alternative, than potential impacts to the dessert ecology of the Ivanpah Valley. I was shocked. In fact, I said he could come and explain to the 75,000 people who would get the aircraft noise why this would be a better alterative.
Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you and other members of the House for passing H.R. 1695, the Ivanpah Bill, out of the House on March 9th of this year by a vote of 420 to 1. The bill has passed the Senate Energy Committee and awaits final approval on the Senate Floor and we hope to have it passed out before the end of this year. I think the important thing to note is, I've read in the newspapers in the last little while about how there's been suggestion that communities should go outside the community to build airports, so as not to impact the existing residents.
That is exactly what we're trying to do. We're literally out in the middle of nowhere. Yet, I think the opposition that we're receiving, for completely different reasons, is just as intense as those who are trying to build it in the middle of community. So as an airport, whether you build it in the community or outside the community, I think the processes and delays and costs are going to be the same.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Walker.
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Ms. Buckingham.
Ms. BUCKINGHAM. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee on Aviation. For the record, I am Virginia Buckingham, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Port Authority, which owns and operates Boston's Logan International Airport. Seated behind me is Tom Kenton, Logan's Aviation Director.
If you have had the opportunity to fly to or through Logan any time in the last few year, you know that Logan is in the middle of a much-needed $3 billion facelift, the first in the airport's 77 year history. Federal support for Logan modernization has been invaluable. And I want to personally thank you, Mr. Chairman, and the members of this Committee, for overcoming significant obstacles to pass AIR–21, which will send the Nation's airports more Federal funding than we have ever received before.
I also want to thank you for giving me the opportunity this morning to talk about our own efforts in Boston to improve airfield efficiency, ease flight delays, reduce noise and pollution for Logan's closest neighbors, and improve operational safety for the traveling public by adding a new runway at Logan Airport.
As former speaker of the House and Massachusetts native Tip O'Neill liked to say, all politics is local. But the consequences of those politics are not local, not when we're dealing with a facility that is as strategically important to the Nation's aviation system as Logan Airport. What happens at Logan affects the Nation.
And the reality is that by any available measure, whether from the FAA, U.S. DOT, or from sophisticated simulation modeling, Logan is one of the most delay-prone airports in the country, ranking eighth worst for on-time departures and arrivals.
According to the FAA's own 1999 forecast, 23 million more people will be flying in and out of New England by the year 2010. That is the equivalent of another Logan Airport. But we're never going to build another Logan Airport in New England.
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So we're trying to handle this new demand by strengthening the New England regional airport system. We're handling it by encouraging and supporting high speed rail. And we're handling it by pursuing a new runway that addresses a significant cause of delay at Logan, northwest wind conditions that can reduce Logan from three operational runways to as few as one in hourly operations from 120 to as few as 60. Our new runway does not add capacity, but it preserves the capacity we already have and need.
When planes stack up at Logan because of reduced runway availability, delays accordion through the country like a growing traffic jam on a busy highway. Let me take a specific example of September 21st, just a few weeks ago. Strong northwest winds over a seven hour period reduced Logan to two runways and created delays of between one and three hours, affecting nearly 700 flights to and from 80 other airports nationwide.
Let me also point out that our runway is not a new concept. Massport first tried to build a new runway at Logan 30 years ago. It was part of our original master plan for the airport.
Community opposition at that time led the State superior court to issue an injunction against the proposed runway, an injunction which is still in effect today. As a result, Logan's airfield has remained unchanged since the late 1960's. Yet passenger volumes have nearly tripled, and the number of annual operations have gone up more than 150 percent.
So what was viewed as a necessity 30 years ago is really now paramount to preventing Logan from becoming a permanent liability in the national aviation system.
There is no doubt that the environmental standards that now exist for runway projects are high. And the review process, we must negotiate for new projects is more demanding. And I believe rightly so.
Since we first entered the State and environmental review process on the new runway in 1995, we have held over 100 public meetings, and we have heard from hundreds of community residents, public officials, opinion leaders, business leaders, environmental groups and other interested parties. The burden of proof was on us, on Massport. We have to prove that the new runway would cut delays, provide environmental benefits and distribute noise more fairly around the airport, and we did.
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Let me add that we took all of these steps for a 5,000 foot runway, on our own property, that required no destruction of wetlands, no taking of homes and actually improved the noise environment around Logan.
Now, almost a year ago to this day, the FAA testified before this Committee and said that improved flight control in the air was no guarantee that flights would have a place to land on the ground. New runways are unpopular, the FAA suggested, but if airports are ever going to be improved, ''hard choices'' will have to be made at all levels of Government with the community.
And if the FAA is waiting for a popular runway to approve, it has a long wait. In my opinion, true consensus can never be reached on such a controversial topic. And I really believe that it is incumbent upon airports and the FAA to make those hard choices.
In the face of a national airport capacity crisis, the FAA and the Federal Government should make construction of runways a national priority. There is a regulatory process in place to deal precisely with such tough decisions. Yet, after five years of intensive study and analysis, and just when we were about to proceed to our final EIR, the FAA delayed that hard choice at Logan. Instead of proceeding to the next and the final step of State and Federal environmental review, the FAA ordered Massport to complete a supplemental draft EIR, and added a new six member citizen review panel to the process.
That review panel is comprised of passionate opponents and proponents of the runway, and has met every month for the past six months, but without any apparent Federal statutory or regulatory framework clarifying its role or defining its mission. Local opposition has mutated into new and arbitrary administrative obstacles at the Federal level.
Where once there was no process when the runway was first introduced in 1970, today the process never ends. The environmental regulations, protections and review procedures that have evolved over the last 30 years at both the State and the Federal level are among this country's greatest accomplishments. And when airports do not abide by these established rules, their projects should be stalled or perhaps even scrapped.
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We're very frustrated, because we meticulously follow the regulatory guidelines required of us. Yet our runway is far from being a reality.
Believe me, I am very, very sensitive to the concerns of the communities surrounding Logan, and so is the Governor of Massachusetts, who supports this new runway. But we're also ever mindful of the transportation and safety needs at stake here. We're very committed to a public process with the FAA, but the process must be clear. It must be consistent, and it must have an end.
Thank you.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much.
We'll now go to Supervisor Griffin.
Ms. GRIFFIN. Thank you. And I want to especially thank Mr. Oberstar, Congressman Oberstar for inviting me here from California.
Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member Lipinski, other members of the Subcommittee, my name is Mary Griffin. I'm a county supervisor for the County of San Mateo, California. Our county is located in the San Francisco Peninsula, immediately south of the city and county of San Francisco.
We are home to approximately 770,000 residents. I have that constituency, we run county-wide. And we are also home to San Francisco International Airport.
In my role as a county supervisor, I wear many hats, including chairperson of the San Francisco International Airport Community Roundtable. On behalf of my colleagues on the roundtable, I thank you for this opportunity to appear before you today to address some of the challenges associated with airport development, and to describe our local process in the Bay Area.
But before I discuss the airport community roundtable and its role in this development, I feel it's important to describe briefly the most recent planning effort to address the needs of future development of the three major airports. These air carrier airports are very close together. I am vice chair of the Regional Airport Planning Committee, RAPC, of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, our MPO for the Bay Area. And we have just completed an 18 month process to prepare comprehensive update of the regional airport system plan for the Bay Area.
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That process included consideration of proposed runway development at San Francisco International Airport and nearby Oakland International Airport. We reviewed several detailed studies, including potential noise impacts and other environmental impacts related to San Francisco Bay airspace and air traffic issues, capacity, delay issues, other transportation options for the Bay Area, and we even included a study of high speed rail and construction of a new regional airport.
After numerous public hearings, including several regional airport noise forums, and testimony from several environmental groups, both RAPC and MTC adopted the plan. The plan supports development of our three air carrier airports, including additional runways at San Francisco International Airport and Oakland International Airport, to meet future air travel demand in the Bay Area and to maintain and expand the strong economic vitality of the region.
The San Francisco Airport/Community Roundtable was formed in 1981 by a Memorandum of Understanding, by the way, I was mayor of the small city near the airport and was signatory to that at that time, as a result of completion of the very first FAA-approved FAR Part 150 Noise Compatibility Program in the United States. The roundtable's focus is noise impacts related to aircraft operations at San Francisco International Airport. This voluntary committee consists of 23 elected and appointed officials from the City and County of San Francisco, the County of San Mateo, and 18 of the 20 incorporated cities in our county, San Mateo.
A key member of the committee is the Airport Director, who attends each meeting as the representative of the San Francisco Airport Commission. Local FAA staff and several airline chief pilots attend our meetings also, and serve as technical advisors. Technical support is also provided by airport noise abatement staff, roundtable staff, and consultants. We are funded by our own membership.
The Roundtable provides a forum for the public to address local elected officials, airport management, local FAA staff and airline representatives, regarding aircraft noise impacts in affected neighborhoods and communities. The committee monitors a performance-based aircraft noise mitigation program, as implemented by airport staff, and we interpret community concerns, and attempt to achieve additional noise mitigation through a cooperative sharing of authority brought forth by the aviation industry, the FAA, airport management, and local government officials.
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The roundtable uses this interactive process to identify key issues, formulate possible mitigation actions, evaluate the effectiveness and feasibility of mitigations, and recommend mitigation actions to the airport and FAA. Major issues are reviewed through a subcommittee structure for detailed analysis.
The roundtable adopts a semi-annual work program and meets monthly to address key issues. Roundtable efforts include collaboration with the FAA and the airport to establish noise abatement arrival and departure procedures, initiation of a test house project to mitigate low frequency backblast noise. We have produced a noise abatement training video for airline flight crews, and we publish a quarterly newsletter about roundtable activities. We also have a roundtable web site, which I won't read to you, it's in the written correspondence we have sent to you.
I must note that there is no local, State, or Federal mandate for the roundtable to exist. It continues to operate because the membership sees this forum as the most valuable approach to addressing the complex issues of airport noise impacts. The roundtable is considered by the State of California Department of Transportation and the FAA as a national model for intergovernmental cooperation to address airport noise issues. In June of 2001, the roundtable will celebrate its 20th anniversary.
In 1992, the San Francisco Airport Commission adopted a comprehensive master plan for San Francisco International Airport that would provide landside facilities, including the largest international airport terminal building in North America, to accommodate 51 million annual passengers by the year 2006. Because of the scope and impact of that project, which is currently under construction, I'm sure many of you are aware of that, if you fly in and out of the airport, but it is nearly finished, the roundtable used the mitigation program from the Federal and State environmental review process as a starting point to negotiate an additional mitigation package with the airport to address our community's concerns.
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Two key elements of that package were a commitment from the San Francisco Airport Commission to provide up to $120 million to fund local aircraft noise insulation programs and another $120 million to fund vehicular congestion relief for our major roadways. We're proud of our success in obtaining the outstanding support and cooperation from the Airport Director and the Airport Commission.
In conjunction with this expansion and because of our serious delay and congestion problems in the San Francisco area, the airport has proposed a runway reconfiguration to enhance capacity, reduce delays, and reduce aircraft noise impacts in affected communities. The roundtable receives a monthly report on the status of that plan where public questions and comments about the project and process are welcomed.
The EIS/EIR review process is underway and a draft environmental document will be published next summer. Based on the content of that document, I anticipate the roundtable will initiate another mitigation process, similar to the process in 1992, that will result in a ''win-win'' outcome for all participants. Given the roundtable's history of success in reaching a cooperative approach with the Airport, we feel that that negotiation process will be successful.
However, environmental issues, including aviation noise, will continue to affect our ability to expand and improve our national transportation system at our major airports. The key to success with this issue is in balancing the national need to improve our aviation infrastructure with the local need to maintain our high quality of life.
The San Francisco International Airport Community Roundtable is a model that continues to seek that balance. I would welcome the support of the Congress, the Department of Transportation, and the FAA to help us at the local level find that balance. I believe that we can achieve our mutual goals by working together.
Thank you for the opportunity to make these remarks.
Mr. DUNCAN. Well, thank you for being with us, Supervisor Griffin, and for coming the distance that you have come today.
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And I'm going to yield my time for questions at this point to Mr. Isakson.
Mr. ISAKSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Dillingham, first of all, I've read your report to the Ranking Member Mr. Oberstar, and I want to compliment you on its lack of editorialization and its apparent objectivity. And I want to, I assume once your agency has issued a report like this, if your recommendations are carried out, it's really up to us to do that, and not up to you. You are not the enforcer, but you are the informer, I guess, is that correct?
Mr. DILLINGHAM. Yes, sir. The way the system operates is that we will follow up to see exactly what happens with our recommendations and we also report back to the Congress on the status of our recommendations. We hope that if the Congress finds merit in the recommendations that they will work with the agencies to help make sure that they are in fact implemented.
Mr. ISAKSON. Well, now, I do not want to put you in a box, I want to put us in a box, but I have to ask you the questions to sort of be able to do that. In your testimony, you made the statement, which I agree with, that conformity with Clean Air, as it relates to aviation, the standards are very broad, vis-a-vis, they are far more specific in terms of highway compliance. Did I understand that correctly?
Mr. DILLINGHAM. Yes, sir.
Mr. ISAKSON. Secondly, you made the statement, and I believe I'm correct, and please tell me if I'm wrong, that to a certain extent with EPA coordinators or operators, the lack of knowledge, and I'm not putting them in a bad light there, aviation versus highway transportation was more apparent, or there was less knowledge on a day to day basis, because they deal far more with highways than airports. Was I correct in that?
Mr. DILLINGHAM. Absolutely. Just as many of the witnesses have said, there hasn't been a great deal of airport construction, and it happens so infrequently that you have this lack of institutional knowledge as opposed to the amount of highway construction that goes on.
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Mr. ISAKSON. Well, I want to make two observations, Mr. Chairman, if I was correct, which I assume I was. Number one, after Mr. Dillingham's agency issued this report, it was submitted to everybody, EPA, NASA, the airport people, everybody else. And they were allowed to comment. And everybody's comment was that they generally concurred with the report.
But one agency, EPA, made the following statement. Although EPA officials generally agreed with the facts in the report, they suggested that we further emphasize airport's shared responsibility for managing their impact on the environment, noting that airports must take a more active role in working with local, State and Federal officials.
And my point in reading that, that is not necessarily a totally negative statement. But of all the agencies, they were the one that didn't acknowledge the constructive criticism on them, but rather kind of threw it back in the airports. And then, when you read NASA's response and their corrections, and you turn to page 67, and it was over something to do with fuels and the amount of NOX, but it says, this is a quote, ''EPA agrees with FAA that safety is the highest priority for aviation, but maintains that using less polluting technologies does not necessarily compromise safety.''
Now, that statement, made in the context of NASA's having already told them that the less polluting technologies had been developed, was not commercially available. My whole point in making all this is this. I have a great deal of respect for EPA. I think both, and Mr. Cox's five recommendations were outstanding, because they really gave us all an equal responsibility. Mr. Walker's testimony with regard to Nevada was the same.
We really need to encourage the Environmental Protection Agency to be more objective in the requirements of the airports and conformity, and less subjective and more cooperative in finding solutions, rather than less protracting in the time these compliance reports are done, or we will never be able to make a dent in the capacity requirements we have in the aviation facilities in this country.
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And anybody on the panel can address that if they want to. And if I miss something, correct me. And I'm not picking on EPA, but everything in here points back to the fact that they are so narrow in their focus without getting into its need of cooperation with the other areas that we're getting into protracted approval process, which jeopardizes both financing as well as in some cases maybe even safety. And if anybody wants to touch that, you are happy to.
Mr. COX. It's not just the EPA. I mean, the EPA——
Mr. ISAKSON. No, I'm not just picking on them, but this report focuses on that.
Mr. COX. Yes. Exactly. And I think your point is very well taken. And we just need some leadership there to bring these things to decisions. I mean, the problem is that there's never a final decision, it just sort of lays upon the table. So we need someone, EPA, FAA, someone to bring all of the viewpoints together and make a decision and move on. That is the issue that I think is most critical from my perspective.
Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. Walker?
Mr. WALKER. I think that as airport directors, it's very frustrating not to have some very specific procedures and guidelines that we can use and as we go through try to develop, particularly in air quality. As Las Vegas has grown very rapidly, certainly air quality has become an issue. We're having a problem with CO and also NOX. When you get into trying to do your environmental, you have got noise and you have got CO and you have got NOX. Every solution you come up with might be good for one, but exacerbates the other.
And you have no control over what happens in the airline industry, you can't control what the emissions are from aircraft, you can only do what the airport can do in terms of what's on the ground. It becomes very difficult for us to develop a strategy that will allow us to meet these air quality regulations, assuming we know exactly what they are, which we do not.
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Another issue I think that is been somewhat frustrating for us is, there are things we could do today to help air quality. And we do not. The reason is that we're going to need to do those things as offsets for future projects, and there's no credit system available. If you do something today, you get a pat on the head and a congratulations. But when you go to your next environmental, it's what did you do for me lately.
And so we're very careful to time the things that we do that are beneficial for air quality to when we need the offsets for the things that we're going to do that are difficult for air quality. And we have suggested to the EPA on numerous occasions that they need to develop some kind of a system where we can address things today as we go along and get some kind of credit for it for the things that are going to happen into the future. Because airports are a long process. And you have to build things in big increments and they're very expensive. You can't just do things a year at a time. And we could be doing some things for the benefit of air quality a year at a time, but the process does not allow us to do that, and that is a conflict.
So there's a lot of things I think the EPA could do in working with airports that would help us and make our job a lot easier in trying to plan these long term projects that are so critical for aviation.
Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. Chairman, just a comment. I really appreciate their answers. Because if you read this report that was done by Mr. Dillingham's agency, that is basically what it says, that we do need to take a lead and have more objective and less subjective criteria in the whole process. And I say all of this not to have been critical of the EPA, but in everything we heard last week and everything we hear today, and then when you read the report, the one thing that is out there and protracting our time and our ability to deal with the capacity thing as it deals with runways and taxiways is the moving targets that exist within the EPA compliance.
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And so I hope we can get to as many specific benchmarks and incremental benchmarks, which I think is what Mr. Walker was referring to because of the protracted time as it is, to help make it easier and better, both for the airports as well as the quality environment. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. DUNCAN. Well, thank you, Mr. Isakson. Obviously, this panel can't criticize the EPA or any other agency, or they'll come back and get them later.
Mr. ISAKSON. Oh, and I wasn't trying to put them in that position.
Mr. DUNCAN. Sometimes some of these agencies need a little criticism, because they could speed things up. I'm told by Mr. Lipinski that Mr. Boswell is next, but that Mr. Boswell has no questions. Is that correct?
So that means Mr. McGovern then is next.
Mr. MCGOVERN. Well, first of all, I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing, and I want to thank the Ranking Member as well. I want to associate myself with Mr. Lipinski's opening remarks.
This hearing is timely, because we had a hearing last week on airport delays and this subject of airport capacity was brought up quite prominently in those hearings. Clearly, we have a problem in this country, as the economy becomes increasingly global and more and more people are traveling and there's a demand for increased capacity at airports for not only passengers but for cargo that we need to do something.
But I guess what I want to emphasize here is, I've heard in some of the testimony about some of the local concerns. And they've been characterized as not kind of being, I'm trying to think of the right word here, but legitimate in terms of holding up some of the airport expansion construction.
Sometimes local concerns are just concerns, and they can be addressed. Sometimes they're more than that. I mean, there are legitimate environmental issues, and I can't speak to every single instance here of the airports that you represent. But sometimes there are legitimate environmental issues. There are neighborhood concerns that are very serious that I think do require that other alternatives be looked at.
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So Mr. Cox, when you talk about the Federal Government becoming more of an advocate for increased capacity at certain airports, I guess I get a little bit nervous. Because none of us up here have to live in those communities. So for us to kind of intervene and to say that we know best, I guess I'd be a little bit nervous about doing that. I wouldn't want to do anything that minimizes the importance of local involvement and neighborhood involvement in some of these decisions.
Again, some of these issues can be resolved. Some of them I think are legitimate and may require a different approach.
Having said that, I agree with what Ms. Buckingham said, that I think we do really need to come up with an expedited process. Sometimes these things drag out forever and ever and ever, and there's no end in sight. There needs to be clear cut definitions of what hurdles airports have to jump through in order to expand. I will say one thing, that Ms. Buckingham talked about, and maybe if others want to comment on it, I'd appreciate it. Maybe Ms. Buckingham wants to say some more about this.
One of the things that I really believe is that where it is appropriate to expand capacity at an airport, we should do that, and we need to do that. But we also need to understand that even where it is appropriate, that four or five years down the road, you are going to be back here and we're going to still have this discussion about, we need to expand because the demands are every greater.
I really believe that there needs to be more of a move toward regionalization. We have airports all throughout this country that are under-utilized right now. And we need to figure out ways, I think, to utilize them better. And I think part of easing some of the concerns in some of the neighborhoods of the airports where expansion is running into some roadblocks right now is if it is clear, you know, that the next time, we're not going to be coming in saying, well, put another runway here, and another runway and another runway, that we do have a plan to ease congestion at these airports. And I'd appreciate any of your comments on regionalization.
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Ms. BUCKINGHAM. Thank you, Mr. Congressman. And we all agree with you that community concerns are very important, and we all work very aggressively with our neighbors on every project that we proceed with. Because that is in our interest. We want to get the projects done, but we won't be able to if the community is not at the table.
I guess the point I was making is that some of these concerns become very emotional, and there has to be a point where the FAA, whose responsibility it is to ensure the efficiency and the safety of the system, make sure we have met our standard of proof, make sure that we're willing and able to mitigate for any impacts we have on the neighborhoods, then ultimately make a decision that is in the best interest of the national aviation system as a whole.
But we also recognize that runways are not the only answer. It's a very important part of the puzzle, but we have to look at the other parts of the system that need to be addressed. And at Logan, and I know at other airports in the country, a big part of the solution to our congestion is making greater use of the regional airports that we have throughout New England.
We're very fortunate, because we have a regional airport system already in place. We have four airports within an hour's drive of Logan. And those airports have made significant infrastructure investments with the help of the Congress and the FAA in the last several years. And they're attracting air service and they're growing.
In fact, Manchester and T.F. Green in New Hampshire and Rhode Island respectively are among the fastest growing airports in the country. And in your hometown, you know we took over operation of Worcester Regional Airport last January, and are investing our own resources in marketing airlines, and have brought new service to that airport.
We're also taking an unprecedented step, I think, for an airport, in that we're spending our own money marketing the regional airports, advertising on radio and in the newspaper and in the movie theater, even, on movie screens, that passengers who live closer to another airport, and one out of five that come to Logan do live closer to one of these other airports, should use those instead. And we need to continue that effort, and we're committed to.
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Mr. WALKER. I'd like to respond to that as well. We have an airport system, we have one large air carrier airport, but we have actually two other substantial general aviation airports in our community, six miles in either direction, either north or south from McCarran. Our biggest frustration is the fact that they're not used as much as they could be. We have small general aviation airplanes that love to come to McCarran, because literally you are at the back door of the famous Las Vegas strip when you land, as opposed to maybe being three or four miles away.
One thing I think that brought this to our attention and to the attention of the community is, not too long ago, we had a 20 year old rent a plane in Denver to fly to McCarran, the seventh busiest airport in the country, in a single engine Cessna. He crashed about a half a mile before the airport, but the crash is not the important thing. I think the important thing is, as somebody stated, as if he would have landed at McCarran, couldn't have rented a car. Because the rental car agencies have the right to say that somebody who's under 21 can't rent a car, when at McCarran, we do not have the right to say that somebody who's flying a single engine Cessna who's 20 years old can't land at the seventh busiest airport in the country that eats up one or two or three landing slots for a large commercial aircraft, when we have very fine adequate general aviation facilities for both small general aviation planes and for commercial jets.
We're trying to build a new runway at our Henderson Executive Terminal. And just to give you an example of what happens with an environmental problem when you try to do these system-wide airports, we did an environmental assessment with the FAA to be able to expand the airport. And that went fine. And then we needed to lease a little bit of land from the BLM, because as I indicated, 90 percent of the land in Clark County is owned by the Federal Government. They needed to also do an environmental assessment. They can't use the one the FAA did.
So we have to do an environmental assessment with them that took about a year. And now there's an appeal from somebody who lives clear in the northwest end of town that no plane from Henderson is ever going to fly over their home. But yet we're going to the land appeals board which could take up to three years, because they're packed.
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If it takes three years to go before the land appeals board, the EA from the Federal Aviation will expire, and we'll have to start all over again. And so you can see, in trying to develop a regional system, you are chasing your tail. Because you have to do this process and this process, this takes too long, you have got to start over on this process.
It seems to me that we ought to be able to have a system where you can go through that process once, address all the issues for everybody involved and be done with it, because the issues are exactly the same, yet the process seems to be set up so that anybody that doesn't want you to do what you want to do, they can just frustrate you through the process. And even at the end of the day, if you are right, you can still be in a problem, because the process is so lengthy, and then those expiration dates on the other process just gets very frustrating.
Mr. DILLINGHAM. And if I might comment, if you look at the projected growth that this industry is supposed to have over the next five or ten years, we're going to need capacity wherever we can get it. I mean, I certainly support the concept of regionalism. We need to try to have as many of the regional airports as possible and we need to make effective use of our existing capacity.
But unless we add new capacity to the system, what we have seen the last two summers, and what we'll probably see again next summer, that is, delays are going to get worse and worse and worse. And so where you do have a community that is willing, I mean, a lot of communities do not want the new capacity. But if you do have a community that wants to add capacity for the overall good of their community, and for the overall good of the country, then we need to streamline the processes, not vacate any environmental regulations, but just improve the process so that we can get this new capacity on stream.
Mr. MCGOVERN. Thank you for your response.
I just want the record to reflect also, since I am from Massachusetts, I really do appreciate the efforts of Ms. Buckingham and Massport. Because I do think under her leadership this issue of supporting regional airports has really taken on some new life. I think in the long run, it's going to not only ease some of the congestion at Logan, but it's going to help our economy across the entire State. So I do appreciate that.
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Thank you.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you, Mr. McGovern.
Mrs. Tauscher.
Mrs. TAUSCHER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a statement I'd like to add to the record, with unanimous consent.
Mr. DUNCAN. Yes, you may enter your statement, full statement in the record.
Mrs. TAUSCHER. Thank you.
I want to thank you and Mr. Lipinski and Mr. Oberstar for your work on this Committee. As you know, I'm the only Bay Area member on the Transportation Committee. And I'm so happy to see Mary Griffin here. Thank you for your hard work.
We need a new runway in San Francisco, as you know, and we need to reconfigure Oakland. What I'm concerned about, as someone that works on all the intermodal areas of transportation, is that we have bureaucratic gridlock that clearly is almost as bad as the NIMBY problems that you have in neighborhoods and the kinds of concerns that we all have for protecting the environment. We clearly have challenges to sustain a very strong economy, to keep our communities liveable, and to keep our air and water clean. We know that it's a very difficult balancing act.
The challenges we have here is that we are not originators of these ideas, nor are we necessarily the place where the rubber meets the road. And all of you, working with us, enable us to make decisions on how to invest Federal tax dollars. And we certainly have tremendous oversight with the FAA.
If you could just all very quickly tell me what you think are the one or two things that aside from this issue of bureaucratic gridlock and breaking it, what are the first two things that you think that we can do with you, and I'll start with you, Mary, that would really have a positive impact on shortening the amount of time to get these permits passed and processes approved and get the money that you need? Because frankly, all of you are going to need Federal investment to get your processes done.
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What can we do next year? What would be your first request or second request for legislation that we could do that would actually have an on the ground impact? And let me just very quickly say, Mary, your leadership at home is invaluable.
Ms. GRIFFIN. Thank you.
Mrs. TAUSCHER. It is very important for me as a member of a food chain that is trying to be responsive to constituents in a huge area, the metropolitan Bay Area, to make sure that we have our communities running these things. We have to have local control. We have to have the communities and the friends and the neighbors make these decisions. But there are things that clearly we can do by breaking the bureaucratic gridlock, adding tax incentives.
And what are we going to do about, frankly, making sure that we have got the right mix between general aviation, regular airports that take care of passengers, and cargo, which is a big area of expertise and a big issue in the Bay Area? So please start there.
Ms. GRIFFIN. Oh, that last question is a real mind boggler, Congresswoman Tauscher. Of course, as you know, our county owns two general aviation airports which are constantly under attack because of the expensive—when you have a county where the average, the median home price is $669,000, you really have a problem about land values, and how people address the use of that land.
But going back to your first question, if I may, one of the things that we find as a roundtable, and I'll speak because I have had more experience there, is that sometimes the funding for the FAA, the appropriations for the FAA do not keep up with the plans and the funding. For one thing, the safety issue in our metropolitan area is really concern. Because we have that brand new Bay TRACON Center moving to Sacramento, but they can't move there for another five years, because there is no funding to staff it. Here sits that wonderful, what is it, three or four million dollar building with two people or three people in it, and the operations can't move from one community to that community because the appropriations haven't been there.
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And that in itself presents a great problem to us. Even about designing new flight paths, which the FAA has been very open about with our group. We have really had that kind of face to face, we have run models, we have done all of those things to try to improve the flight tracks, the elevation and all of that, to look our communities as they've become more highly populated. And it's very difficult to implement any of those things when you do not have the appropriations for the FAA to do their update. That is one thing.
I know you can't come and dictate to BCDC, you know what BCDC is, the rest of you, that is the Bay Conservation Development Committee, which was designed to be the watchdog for the filling of San Francisco Bay, which is considered to be a very important natural resource. And our MPO serves nine counties. Our population, as Congresswoman Tauscher knows, is very large.
So that in itself is not something that Congress would want to get involved in, I'm sure. However, when it comes to the mitigation measures for San Francisco Airport, for instance, and also for Oakland, though they are about eight years behind us, perhaps, in the capacity need, but that is not very long. The money for the mitigation, in our case, would restore thousands and thousands of wetland acres. I'm not talking about just a little patch, but thousands of wetland acres, if that money can be found, if that money is readily available to purchase the saltlands, the Cargill saltlands.
And so that is probably a place where we might need some Congressional help.
I think that the recognition, we do not expect to be funded in our roundtable efforts. But the recognition that we are serving a purpose is very important. Sometimes a pat on the back is almost as good as a free lunch.
Mrs. TAUSCHER. I'll buy you lunch and give you a hug, because I think that your roundtable is a model for the country——
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Ms. GRIFFIN. Thank you.
Mrs. TAUSCHER.—at making sure that you have great consensus built on the ground, at home, where you have to have it done.
Ms. GRIFFIN. And you know, Congresswoman Tauscher, that we recently did those community roundtable efforts all over the Bay Area. We traveled for many, many miles.
Mrs. TAUSCHER. Thank you for coming to my district.
Ms. GRIFFIN. Thank you. I hope that that satisfies some of your questions.
Mrs. TAUSCHER. It does. You are saying money for the FAA and making sure that we have streamlined processes on the mitigation issues for the environment.
Ms. GRIFFIN. Yes, thank you.
Mrs. TAUSCHER. Ms. Buckingham.
Ms. BUCKINGHAM. Thank you. Two quick things. I think it's very important that some certainty be imposed in the process in terms of deadlines. At the State level, which is a process that runs in parallel in our State, with the Federal process——
Mrs. TAUSCHER. Knowing that it's the Government, would you take predictability instead?
[Laughter.]
Mrs. TAUSCHER. There is no certainty for us.
Ms. BUCKINGHAM. Seven days after the close of public comment period, our State environmental agency is required to give us a decision. So we know that there will be a time when we'll get an answer.
That is not the case at the Federal level. In fact, we waited many, many months for an answer from the FAA on whether we could file our final document and finally got the answer, several months later, that we could not. So that is one.
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Two, I think going forward and looking to the future, airports are going to have to be able to have the authority to kind of rationalize what kind of service is at their own airports, particularly in a multi-airport system. And let me give you a quick example. We have many charters that operate out of Logan Airport to the Caribbean, Florida, etc., in the winter months. And they take up a lot of room and stay overnight and take up parking spaces, which at a congested airport like Logan are very valuable. We have run out of room, basically, and have told the charters that they should look to the regional airports to meet their service needs.
And what we got instead of, you know, that is good, you should be trying to use the under-utilized airports, was a letter of investigation from the FAA, saying that our policy may be discriminatory. And if we're going to deal with the congestion problems at the major airports, we have to be able to make those kinds of decision.
Mrs. TAUSCHER. So you are saying that basically the market has to also be part of this?
Ms. BUCKINGHAM. The market for the charters exists at those regional airports. And they can have a viable business, and there is no reason they have to operate at an airport like Logan. It doesn't make sense, given what we're trying to accommodate.
Mrs. TAUSCHER. So you want more predictability, too?
Ms. BUCKINGHAM. Yes.
Mrs. TAUSCHER. Mr. Walker?
Mr. WALKER. Thank you. FAA funding for staff is one critical issue. Our region does a wonderful job in working with us, but they just do not have enough people, given all of the projects that are going on in their region, California, Nevada. One of the things that we would suggest, we have actually suggested to them, but they say they cannot do, something that you do in the building trades, is if you have a big project, and they do not have enough staff, you'll fund for them the cost of a special inspector, which they have a list and they'll hire somebody and they'll come work for them at your expense, but just on your project.
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We have suggested that to the FAA, and the Washington headquarters people said that, from the legal department, they can't do that. And when you are doing a half a billion dollar project, the cost of the person who's going to review your documents is insignificant in terms of getting it done in a timely fashion. We would gladly be able to hire those special inspectors from a list approved by the FAA, let them supervise them, just to get our work done in a hurry. But they say they can't do that. That is a change that would be very helpful.
Mrs. TAUSCHER. We could do a pilot project. Are you suggesting we do a pilot project on something like that?
Mr. WALKER. That would be great. Just change it or do a pilot project. I think it's been done very successfully in other governmental agencies and being able to hire those people who have the expertise that will work on a contract basis. And that would really give you a real boost in the large projects that come on line that really tie up the staff, which is very overburdened with just the regular day to day duties.
The other thing which has already been mentioned but I want to reiterate is time frames. I think it's very important that you have very specific time frames in the regulations, that if an agency doesn't respond within a specific time frame, they lose the opportunity to respond. When there's a deadline for public comment, you do not say, well, you know, it came in within 15 days, that is close enough, we're going to go ahead and respond. There ought to be time frames that are definitive, you can look at it and you can see what comes in on that response, then you can start preparing your responses to the comments without having to worry about what's going to trickle in, or wonder if some Federal agency is every going to respond and you can't close it out until they have responded.
So there should be time frames, either you lose your opportunity to participate in the process if you do not respond within those time frames. I think that would be very helpful for us.
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And in terms of the whole capacity and the regionalization, I think, and I'm going to throw out something that is somewhat controversial, but as my airport colleagues will attest, I've never been opposed to that, airports need the ability, I think Ms. Buckingham touched on it, to be able to manage their resources for the benefit of the aviation community as a whole, and not the individual aircraft or individual pilot.
We have rules by the FAA that absolutely restrict us from determining who lands at our airport. We can build very expensive facilities and general aviation facilities that are there waiting for people to come, but they choose to come to facilities that are much more expensive for the larger aircraft, and we cannot do anything about that. We cannot say, you can't come to this airport, because we have capacity over at this other airport that you go to, and that makes our system more efficient. We can't do that.
And I think that at some point we have to address that. Thirty percent of our capacity today is eaten up by general aviation, 30 percent. And if we could reduce that to 15 percent, our delays in commercial aviation would be cut drastically. And we have the capacity, we're willing to build more. The community is supportive. It's just the Federal regulations that do not allow us to address those issues.
Mrs. TAUSCHER. Thank you. Mr. Cox.
Mr. COX. My two suggested programs would be one, to establish a pilot program allowing maybe eight or ten projects of national importance to be fast tracked to add capacity more quickly, and then secondly, create a position within Government to oversee capacity enhancement, who would coordinate the efforts between the various Government agencies, to make decisions in an expeditious fashion, without ignoring environmental laws.
Mrs. TAUSCHER. Great. Thank you.
Mr. DILLINGHAM. I'd like to go back to the Chairman's opening remarks and bring back to the table the study that is in AIR–21, which in fact speaks directly to some of the very core issues that the panel is talking about, the coordination between various levels of government. I think that if the Department of Transportation's feet are held to the fire to come up with more than just a study, but a study that has action items that in fact will make a difference.
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And I think in addition to that, we can think about pushing for more intermodal kinds of activities, to keep some of the congestion from being at the airport—whether it's light rail or however it's arranged, we have to also look at that area as well.
Mrs. TAUSCHER. Thank you very much. Thanks for the great ideas.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much, Mrs. Tauscher.
And now we will go to the man whom all of us recognize as the leading aviation expert in the Congress, our Ranking Member, Mr. Oberstar.
Mr. OBERSTAR. I greatly appreciate you and Mr. Lipinski holding this hearing. I think your combined effort in setting this hearing up on a subject that is probably the most important of the capacity issues that we have considered in this Subcommittee in aviation.
And the title, challenges, is often a substitute for quality of life. Because that is really what we're talking about when we talk about challenges in building new runways.
Ten years ago in this Subcommittee, Mr. Clinger and I were working together on expanding funding for airport runway construction and the investment in modernization of the air traffic control system, I said that if we succeed in addressing all these airside issues and hard capital issues, but do not address noise, we will not succeed in expanding airport capacity. Noise is a capacity issue.
The Louisville Courier, shortly after we passed that legislation in 1991, reported, spurred by a prediction of 56 percent increase in air traffic by 1998, airports across the United States are scrambling to expand, in 1991. You could say the same thing today, airports are still working hard to expand. And here we are, ten years, 19 runways, and a two-thirds increase in air traffic later, and we're still talking about growth and expansion.
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That is the one constant in transportation, that every prediction and projection of growth has fallen far short of the actual growth that has taken place. Dr. Dillingham, you and your staff at GAO have done your usual superb job of presenting the Subcommittee and full Committee with a thorough, thoughtful presentation of the issues that we have to confront and address in dealing with capacity expansion.
At our large hub airports, there are only five runways under construction, only ten on the drawing boards. That is the 50 busiest airports. Only ten have built a new runway in the last ten years. Only six have a new runway project on the drawing boards. Only five have a runway under construction.
That is not a very good record. And frankly, as the author of the passenger facility charge in 1990, I'm disappointed that only 23 percent of PFC dollars have gone into new runway construction. It's done a lot of other good things, and I support the PFC, continue to. We should have done more of it this year. But not enough has gone into capacity.
Now, if we do not address the quality of life issues, the public is not going to tolerate another two-thirds expansion in air traffic. They're not tolerating it in Europe. They do not tolerate it in Tokyo at Narita. They resisted any increase in Hong Kong, that is why the Hong Kong government built a $25 billion airport in the ocean in 600 feet of seawater. We have to address that issue here, and this study gets us in the right direction.
When you talk about noise, air and water quality impacts, runoff of deicing materials into nearby waterways, you are talking about real serious quality of life issues. There was one year when the Minnesota River did not freeze over, because there was so much runoff of deicing materials from the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport into the Minnesota River that it just simply didn't freeze. They had to deal with that issue. Now we have deicing and recovery and reclamation initiatives.
There's a very instructive lesson. The State of Minnesota initiated these noise barriers you see along highways. And over 25 years ago, the first mile or so of noise barrier was put up along 494 in Minneapolis-St. Paul. And it just happened that our then commissioner of highways lived in the neighborhood where that barrier went up. It was totally coincidental, and anyone who knows Ray Lapagard knows he wouldn't have done that.
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[Laughter.]
Mr. OBERSTAR. I saw Commissioner Lapagard after it has been in place for about a week, and I asked him how it was working. He said, you know, it's so effective, it has so reduced highway noise that we can now hear the airplanes coming in at Minneapolis-St. Paul.
[Laughter.]
Mr. OBERSTAR. Well, how do you address these issues effectively? You have to be inclusive. And that is where Mary Griffin's experience is so instructive. All through the GAO report, you find, communicate, cooperate, as key words. Whether it's lack of communication and lack of cooperation, there is also obstruction. There are also obstacles.
I remember when we were working on the noise legislation, Mr. Chairman, in 1990, late into the night. And Mr. Lipinski will recall this very well himself. There were groups from the neighborhood around O'Hare who camped out in my office with sleeping bags to make their point very clear. And I see Mr. Hauptli in the audience, he'll remember that, having served in the Administration at the time.
Those were very intense days of trying to work out a very tough issue. And it was cooperating and communicating and being inclusive and bringing people into the process and not excluding.
Air, water and noise quality issues do not have to stop airport expansion. On the other side of that coin, neither does the prospect of economic growth and prosperity mean that airport neighbors have to endure more noise and air pollution and water pollution in order to enjoy economic growth. It's up to us and the public policy process to find ways to achieve success stories.
And I'd like to ask Dr. Dillingham if, in the course of the GAO work, you can elaborate on the report that you submitted about achievements of airport and community noise groups coming together in key areas like Fort Lauderdale, Oakland, O'Hare, Minneapolis-St. Paul.
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Mr. DILLINGHAM. And Massport, too, Mr. Oberstar.
Mr. OBERSTAR. And Massport.
Mr. DILLINGHAM. Because we definitely agree that Massport is a model. We talked to the people there and we visited there and we visited these other places as well. And I think you hit the nail on the head. You are never going to necessarily satisfy everybody. But what we found is that the more the airports and the airport authorities did in fact work with these communities, the more likely they were able to come to some kind of agreement, some kind of accommodation. And the sooner they work with those various groups, the better.
And what we heard is the same thing that you just told us, that it's not just air, noise, and water. It becomes, the whole package, a quality of life issue, that people are concerned about their quality of life. And again, it's just a matter of increased and more in-depth communication and cooperation.
Mr. OBERSTAR. To what degree did you find the role of local zoning authorities significant in preventing sprawl into the noise footprint of airports?
Mr. DILLINGHAM. Well, it's a mixed bag, of course. As you know, FAA doesn't have authority to do land use. That is in fact a local concern. I think more than having people move into the footprint after the airport is there, what we see is, local communities are saying, we are seeing too much expansion, that when we moved here we knew what it was about. But since then, we have had this tremendous increase in traffic, this tremendous increase in noise and so forth.
So the concern is not land use that is already in place, but the fact that we are in fact having increasing traffic. The cities and the various jurisdictions, in some cases they're very good about maintaining land use. And I think Dulles is a very good example. They have an agreement with Loudoun County that sort of prevents almost all cases of development coming within the footprint. But in some cases, it's not that way. So it's a very mixed bag across the country.
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Mr. OBERSTAR. Ms. Griffin, your roundtable has been very successful. I'm very proud of the work that you have done, very impressed with the inclusiveness of your roundtable. But is noise the only issue that you address? What other quality of life matters do you address at the roundtable?
Ms. GRIFFIN. For the most part, our mandate is noise. And it came as a result of a series, the airport woke up one day, the city and county of San Francisco, and decided that they might better get involved in our county, because some of the residents around the airport marched through a series of small claims court procedures which really untied the shoelaces for many of the legislators in the city of San Francisco. So the roundtable is born out of a recognition that they needed to do more.
That being said, what we have done in conjunction with the roundtable, as we did in 1992, when we did the memorandum of understanding, we brought the cities together to ask for other mitigation factors, the increased attention to traffic around, and certainly safety is something that we rely on very heavily.
When it comes to land use, we have something in California called the Airport Land Use Committee, which is a toothless, a really toothless watchdog. We have been fairly successful in San Mateo County in getting the cities to recognize the fact that building housing under the flight path of a large airport is not the best thing. A nd the other issue would be the liability of the cities themselves, if they allowed this land use to occur. And then there was a payment that they would have to come to terms with that.
Aside from that, we as a county, we are the one of the most urbanized counties in the State of California. I think we're second only to Los Angeles. We're small geographically, but we're second only to Los Angeles and a number of incorporated cities, so we have a lot of balkanization there. It really goes back to relying on the relationships that we have with one another. We have expanded from 10 members in our roundtable, 10 cities to 18, which has been a challenge. But it's been very important and very good, because it's served to be an educational process for everyone.
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Mr. OBERSTAR. Well, projections I've seen of the population growth for the Bay Area indicate that San Francisco and the surrounding area and all those little balkanized communities you talked about are going to add 1,600,000 people in the next two decades.
Ms. GRIFFIN. I'm sorry Congresswoman Tauscher has left, because I do not think it's going to happen on our side of the Bay. I think that is going to happen to the east. And that is one of the reasons they project a need for capacity at Oakland Airport, and also San Jose. Even though we have done some in the north of our Bay, some discussions about relocating a major airport, there is no willingness there to accept. They talk about, as has been said, constraining what's happening. They do not want another airport in their area. It's kind of like some of the public facilities we try to put in neighborhoods.
Mr. OBERSTAR. All of you have to engage in a very delicate balancing act. I'm very impressed with the work that is been done and the willingness to continue studying alternatives at Logan and Mr. Cox, I appreciate your splendid testimony.
Mr. Walker, I was in Las Vegas just a couple of weeks ago for the Interbike Bicycling Trade Show. I talked on a much different kind of land use issue, bicycling, and had the chance to bike out to Red Rock Canyon from downtown Las Vegas and back. It's a wonderful ride. Awful lot of sagebrush out there.
And it seems to me, when you talk about moving, I was impressed with the capacity of that terminal, but also just stunned by its crowding. You have got over 20 million passengers a year coming through that terminal. And it just is not sufficient to handle all the people, the long lines, the waiting, and everybody working hard to move people through. Apart from the slot machines in the terminal there, which gives you a very quick introduction to Las Vegas, I can see how you are just bursting at the seams, it's obvious, and the growth that is continuing in that area.
But I do not think that you make a very good case for increasing capacity by suggesting that we deter general aviation from using major airports in this country. One of the major forces of support for aviation in the United States is general aviation. And you can offer a lot of inducements and encouragement for general aviation to use other facilities. But they do have a right to use the major airports, they just have to have all the equipment. They have to have Mode C and they have to have transponders, and they have to operate under IFR in the TCA.
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Mr. WALKER. Well, we do spend a lot of money on general aviation facilities. I think that you'll talk to those that use the north Las Vegas airport, they'll tell you that is one of the finest general aviation facilities in the country. We spent, I do not know how much we have spent in the last decade, but certainly over $50 million just on that airport alone in improving the facility.
So it's not that we want to discourage general aviation to come to Las Vegas. Most people come to Las Vegas to participate in its activities the same as everybody else does, and we want to accommodate them. The problem is that we need to make the whole system work. And when you throw into the mix a single engine Cessna into the tracks with the 737s, you really slow down the system. You really do.
Mr. OBERSTAR. I understand that.
Mr. WALKER. And it creates a very inefficient system in terms of the overall capacity of our air space and airport system in Las Vegas. And so it's not that we do not want to provide the facilities. We are providing the facilities and are committed to continuing to provide the facilities. We're building two additional general aviation runways, additional terminal at Henderson.
So we want to accommodate everybody. We just need to accommodate them in a more efficient fashion, is our perspective.
Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you very much.
Many other questions I'd like to ask, but thank you. I've way run over my time here.
Mr. DUNCAN. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Oberstar. Mr. Lipinski.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I think that this panel has been extremely interesting. It's a very important subject we're dealing with, but it's been a very candid panel also in stating their opinions, the reasons they believe that we have the capacity problems we have.
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But I would like to, I know that a lot of people have talked on this panel about the problems we have with the Federal Government and the Federal EPA and the Federal FAA and various other Federal Government and agency operations. You also talked about, though, local community problems.
It's been my experience that really the biggest challenge we have in expanding airport capacity, whether it's building new runways or physically expanding the airport itself, is that the people who live around the airport do not want to have any more capacity, because they do not want to put up with any more noise. They do not want to see an expansion of the airport because they do not want to be relocated.
I really think that everything else that you have talked about today is really manageable. I do not know if I support the capacity czar in the White House or not, I think that the White House has enough power and enough influence. I do not think I want to do that. Maybe somehow if we could set up someone in Congress as the capacity czar, I'd go along with that.
But when you really get down to it, and I'd like each one of you to comment on it, is not the real challenge somehow to work out how we resolve these local problems? It's ironic that no one wants to live near an airport and hear the airport. By the same token, everybody would like to live within about 20 minutes driving time of an airport, so they will be able to get to that airport and fly any place in the world any hour of the day, any day of the month that they want to.
But what are your opinions on that? Is there anyone here that really disagrees with me in regard to that being our paramount challenge, to overcome local opposition to the expansion of airport capacity?
Ms. GRIFFIN. Mr. Lipinski, having worked at this for over 20 years now, I couldn't agree with you more. I believe that it is a challenge.
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By the way, I failed to mention that this last year, we had a bill passed by Senator John Burton in our State that made noise be an environmental issue to be considered when discussing things like runway expansion. That is a doubled edged sword, but in some ways it helps a little bit in looking at how we put a runway into the Bay. Because it puts noise on equal footing with the red-legged frog or whatever else we have around. And it helps a little bit in discussing that expansion.
That being said, I find that working with the FAA and the airport and the local elected officials has been extremely helpful. It's taken us out of that litigious mode and put us into one of trying to find resolution to our conflicts. Certainly the housing insulation program is not perfect. But it addresses a great deal. Looking at schools and seeing how you can help them has been very, very helpful.
Having an airport management that is willing to say, as they did recently, at one of our meetings, where is that problem, where are you hearing that plane, where do you think the plane is flying that shouldn't, I'll be out there at 8:30 Friday morning, and I'll go with you and you show me what it is that bothers you. This is a person that works for the San Francisco Airport, and then comes back to our regional meeting, to our airport roundtable meeting and we try to work out something with the FAA, with the control tower, with whatever else, if there are errant pilots.
That is why we have done the video camera thing, the video film for the cockpit. And every single major airline, I think every airline in our airport area, has a copy of that film.
But what you say is absolutely correct, the head of our MPO in the Bay Area said there are only two things that constituents really hate. One is high density development and the other is suburban sprawl. And that is exactly the contradiction that we face.
[Laughter.]
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Mr. LIPINSKI. Anyone else have a comment?
Ms. BUCKINGHAM. I would like to comment. I think you are right, but I'm not sure it's achievable to try to overcome those community obstacles. When you look at Logan Airport, which provides 16,000 jobs, has a $5 billion impact on the local economy, yet you still have opposition from local elected leaders as well as the community, for a project that will actually improve the quality of life for the neighborhoods surrounding Logan Airport, we're directing by making a unidirectional commitment that this runway will only be used for flights landing over the water and taking off over the water, we're directing 75,000 flights over the water, which will take them away from local neighborhoods and reducing the number of people that live in our highest noise impacted neighborhoods.
Quite significantly, given that, given that it is a simple runway on our own property that actually has positive environmental benefits for the community, yet the opposition is as strong as it is to any other project around the country, that actually increases capacity of the airport. I think it's pretty clear that at some point you are not going to be able to overcome the significant opposition. And that is when I think the Federal Government does have a significant role to step in and look at the merits of the project and ultimately make a decision.
Mr. LIPINSKI. You mean to tell me that this new runway is actually going to reduce the number of homes, residential units, that planes fly over, and the community is still opposed to it?
Ms. BUCKINGHAM. Yes. Because of our runway configuration, our two primary runways are in the north-south direction. And the communities at the ends of those runways are the most heavily impacted, because we need that three runway capacity to handle the planes flying into Logan.
If we're able to add a new runway in the east-west direction, so we can have three runways that impact different parts of the airport, we'll be able to more fairly distribute that noise. If we do not, those communities north and south are going to continue to get hammered. And it's really not fair.
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Mr. LIPINSKI. Has that been explained?
Ms. BUCKINGHAM. It's been explained. What we're really dealing with is 30 years of history here, and I'm sure other airports are experiencing the same thing, where 30 years ago, when Logan wanted to do any kind of project or expansion, there was no process and there was no community involvement. Instead, bulldozers showed up at your home and said, we're taking your home and see you later. That obviously cannot and should not ever happen again. And under the kinds of strict reviews that we all undergo, it cannot.
But we're still dealing with that resonance of how airport authorities used to operate. And overcoming that with the community, I think, is very difficult.
Mr. MCGOVERN. Will the gentleman yield just for one quick follow-up?
Mr. LIPINSKI. Sure.
Mr. MCGOVERN. And I guess, again, I do not live in the vicinity of Logan Airport. But is not one of the concerns still from the community that, what's next? You build an additional runway, but then what comes three years or two years or five years down the road? I mean, that is a question that I think a lot of people in the communities that are impacted by some of these initiatives for expansion ask. I think it's a legitimate question, because again, you are going to live there, you are going to buy property there, your kids are going to go to school there, what's the long term plan.
I do not know whether there is a long term plan or not, but I think that is still one of the sticking points.
Ms. BUCKINGHAM. It is. And let me restate that the runway is not the only solution, and Logan Airport is not the only solution for the kind of air traffic increase that we're going to see. We need a runway at Logan to make sure that planes aren't circling over these neighborhood houses late into the night because they can't land. We need a strong regional system so that as many planes and passengers as we can divert to these regional airports are in place. And we need the flexibility from the Federal Government to have management policies at Logan to try to manage the congestion and the kinds of flights that we have today.
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Mr. WALKER. Mr. Lipinski, ours is actually a completely different kind of a problem. We certainly have noise problems, but not to the extent that some of the other communities do. In our newer community, we have been able to plan well out into the future to avoid some of those kind of conflicts, as the community has grown up around the airport.
Our biggest issue is of course now, we're trying to build an airport out in the middle of nowhere were nobody lives. And the planes that would fly in and out of that airport, there's nobody to fly over, because nobody lives out there, and we're still getting significant opposition.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Excuse me for interrupting you, but I think that you may be in a unique position, in that the problems that you have are with the State agencies, the Federal agencies, that are as far as you are concerned, have all this red tape, this bureaucracy. But I believe that that is something that we can deal with, I believe that is something that ultimately we can resolve.
So I do not see your problem being the same as I would say, 95 percent of the problems in this country that affect the expansion of airport capacity, is the noise it creates where people are living.
Mr. WALKER. I agree. And the point I want to make is, even if you resolve those issues, you might find other issues that you have to deal with. Those are just the issues you are fighting today.
We built two new runways in this last decade at McCarran. We started in 1990 with two, we now have four. We have great community support, not that we do not have noise issues. I think from the airport proprietor's perspective, the real problem we have is that the noise issues are becoming different, at least in our community. We used to talk about those that lived in the high noise areas, in the 75 to 70 and the 65 LDN. Now it's becoming single event noise for being the issue.
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If you live in the 55 average, that is fine, you are defined as not being in a high noise area. But if a 727 fully loaded going to Minneapolis in the middle of the summer goes over your house at 1:00 o'clock in the morning every morning and wakes you up, you do not care what the average is. You only care that you get wakened at 1:00 o'clock in the morning every morning. And we do have those kinds of problems.
So I do think that collectively, and I know that our airport organizations have been addressing this to Congress in testimony, collectively we need to address the issue of the stage three and the quieter, those that were converted technically to be compliant with stage three, which are creating a lot of the problems. And also, we have got the economics on the airline side.
So somehow we need to address that issue, so that over time, we can see those single event noise particularly start to diminish. Because I think if we can resolve that problem, then there are a lot of problems that will go away as those issues go away.
Ms. GRIFFIN. Can I add backblast noise to that, too?
Mr. LIPINSKI. OK.
Mr. Cox, do you have anything to say?
Mr. COX. Well, obviously, as I said in my prepared remarks, I think aircraft noise is one of the things that keeps airport capacity from moving forward. We have made a lot of progress in the last 30 years, if you consider the number of people that are no longer in the 65 DNL. Airports, I think, are being very proactive, trying to work with the communities, Part 150 programs, buying land, doing sound insulation.
The one area that we do not have any control over oftentimes is the area of land use and zoning. I know I've been at my airport for nearly 30 years, and for years and years and years, we have pleaded not to have certain——
Mr. LIPINSKI. Let me interrupt you just for a minute so I can understand. In your five point program over there, are you recommending that the Federal Government become involved in this land use and, if you want to create a new airport in Podunk, that the Federal Government should have the power to move in and say, we're going to create this new airport and we're going to supersede local authority?
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Mr. COX. Yes, sir, I do. Because the airport operator does not have, in most cases, any control whatsoever over zoning. And it's being repeated time after time after time, where the airport, over the airport's objections, that property that was either vacant land or commercial land be rezoned for residential.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Mr. Dillingham, we have spoken many times, so I'm not going to ask you to say any more, because we're going to have to move on. But Mr. Chairman, I have the solution to the problem of this airport capacity.
[Laughter.]
Mr. LIPINSKI. First of next year, we're going to pass a bill whereby making you the capacity czar——
[Laughter.]
Mr. LIPINSKI.—for the United States of America. And we're going to take all the powers away from local government, State government, even the rest of the Federal Government, the EPA, the FAA, place it all in your hands, to make sure that we can have additional airport capacity in this country, with the exception of one airport. And that will be exempt from all of this and not be allowed to be expanded at all. And that would be Midway Airport in the City of Chicago, because I live eight blocks west of it.
[Laughter.]
Mr. LIPINSKI. Have a good day. Thank you.
Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Lipinski, thank you very much. I've said before that I've noticed that people who live near airports sometimes develop superhuman hearing and hear sounds, perhaps, that aren't even there. And I was interested in Mr. Dillingham's statement that now the complaints were coming mostly from areas outside the scientifically accepted noise areas.
I can understand neighborhood groups being concerned about noise. But I think that, as Mr. Walker mentioned, one of these big obstacles is now coming from someone who lived a great distance away from the airport they wanted to expand.
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I think some of these environmental groups need to wake up, though, and realize that if they just stop all these airport improvements that what it's going to do, it's going to force millions more people over the years onto the Nation's highways, which are already overcrowded and which are hundreds of times more dangerous. It's going to end up killing many more people. It's going to create much more pollution, because of traffic jams and more trucks and vehicles on the roads.
I think one of the problems is that Government has been buying up more and more land all the time, so there's less and less developable land. So where they were building subdivisions with huge yards in the 1950's and 1960's, now we're jamming more and more people onto less and less space. And that creates problems, and it creates problems in and around airports as well.
Another problem is I read a column last year by Governor Dupont, former Governor Dupont, who said that we could put every family of four in the State of Texas and give each family three acres of land each. And his point was that the Nation still has hundreds of millions of acres of open space. I was in Alaska in August, and I was told that if the island of Manhattan had the same population density as Alaska, Manhattan would have 14 people.
But everybody wants to live near the malls and the restaurants and the movie theaters, so we're leaving the rural areas behind and coming more and more into these population centers. And it does create problems for the airports and in many other ways.
But Ms. Buckingham, let me ask you this. Do you, first of all, you heard me mention this story from USA Today that said, can gridlock be cured by expanding airports. Can you tell us how much more efficient your airport would become if you could get this new runway? Have you done some studies on that? And then secondly, do you realize that after going this 30 year process that you can never satisfy everybody? I mean, all of us know that we can never satisfy 100 percent of our constituents. And in politics, if you can get 80 percent support, it's amazing.
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What do you have to say about that?
Ms. BUCKINGHAM. Well, it will have a significant impact on our delay situation at Logan. As I mentioned, it does not increase our capacity. We'll still just have 3 runways that can handle 120 operations per hour. But it will enable us to be at that capacity more frequently.
We have northwest winds, which are the prevailing winds at Logan, about a third of the year. And our studies show that our delays will be reduced by 30 percent by the addition of this new runway. So clearly, it is a very effective tool in dealing with our efficiency problems at Logan.
And I do agree with you, Mr. Chairman, I do not think we can satisfy everyone. Massport has been a leader in community mitigation. We were the first airport in the country to apply for soundproofing grants and the first to sound insulate homes and schools. And we spent over $100 million soundproofing 6,700 dwelling units and 35 schools around Logan Airport. We voluntarily restricted operations on some of our runways and have restricted the size of planes at our GA facility to a 60 seat maximum plan that can fly there.
So I think we have been there at the table and have tried to take into account the community concerns.
Mr. DUNCAN. We have got a vote going on, and I do not want to hold you up more. I wanted to get into some questions about why there is such a discrepancy in the costs of these runways. They vary so much, as the GAO report or testimony shows in the appendix.
I know one time we held a hearing in this Subcommittee and we had some airport executive who said that because of the environmental rules and regulations and red tape that it delayed by years and made the runways and things cost three times as much as they ordinarily would have. And that is sad, because it drives up costs and it hurts the poor and working people the most, I think.
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But Mr. Walker, I also serve on the Resources Committee, so I was in on the beginning about all of your problems with the BLM and your new airport. And it's ridiculous. I was not surprised, though, that you said that Sierra Club leader was more concerned about the insects in the desert than he was about the fact that thousands of homes would have had to have been destroyed and people moved out of their homes. I think some day people are going to realize that the Sierra Club, which years ago was a respectable group, has now gone so far to the left that they make socialists look conservative.
But you have got to, you know, we can't go along with the extremists all the time in these situations. If we do, we'll never get any airport expanded or improved. We'll never get any of these things done that are going to have to be done if we're going to meet the demands of a growing population.
But I apologize to you, or maybe you'll be glad——
[Laughter.]
Mr. DUNCAN.—we'll not be able to carry this hearing any further. We thank you very much, you have been a very helpful and informative panel. And that will conclude this hearing.
[Whereupon, at 11;35 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned, to reconvene at the call of the Chair.]
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