The bureaucratic process has been the most frustrating thing for both city officials and the residents of Burrwood Addition – at least as far as the Austin Municipal Airport expansion goes.

Friday, September 03, 1999

The bureaucratic process has been the most frustrating thing for both city officials and the residents of Burrwood Addition – at least as far as the Austin Municipal Airport expansion goes.

Approved by the Austin City Council last August by a 6-1 vote (Dick Lang opposed), the airport expansion proposal includes lengthening the Austin Municipal Airport runway by 1,004 feet, bringing it to a total length of 5,800 feet and constructing any needed supplementary taxiways. With the extended runway proposal also comes extended object and obstruction free areas. Those zones will extend far enough to accommodate landing patterns for a 6,500 ft. runway and the instrumentation that is necessary for such a landing. Increasing those zones will result in the removal of 17 homes in Burrwood Addition, the purchase of 228 acres of farmland by the city and the destruction or capping of an unspecified number of trees, some of them in the Hormel Nature Center. County Road 3 will also have to be rerouted around the safety zone.

The approval came in spite of a petition signed by nearly 2,000 residents against the project. Estimates last year had the environmental statements and layout plans for the airport being approved before Christmas 1998, with land acquisition to start this summer.

The 1999 school season has started and still the city awaits final approval of the paperwork and federal/state funding, while Burrwood residents wonder how long it will be before the city comes to buy 17 of their homes.

Best estimate right now?

Early next year.

Although the Environmental Impact Statement has long been approved, the Environmental Assessment is in the final two weeks of the approval process, having finally been OK’d by the Environmental Protection Agency. The airport layout plan has one remaining approval (of three) left to go.

"We’re at the winding-down stage now," city engineer Jon Erichson said, speaking of the state and federal agencies that have been holding the project hostage. "The most frustrating thing for us has been how long it’s taken. No one really objected to anything – we met all the criteria – they just didn’t get around to it."

As for funding, that’s in the hands of the U.S. Congress which has yet to approve or disapprove the AIR 21 bill (Aviation Investment and Reform Act for the 21st Century).

If approved, the implications for Austin are that the city’s share of the anticipated land acquisition costs goes from 50 percent to 10 percent and odds are good that the Hormel Food Corporation’s guaranteed $1 million (Hormel will pay it if the bill doesn’t pass) will also be taken care of by the Federal Government. While the bill doesn’t include specific language concerning the airport in Austin, it is the "pot of money that the Austin Airport would be funded from," Lee Aase, communications director in Congressman Gil Gutknecht’s Rochester office, said. "We would expect that it (the Austin Airport) would receive funding there."

"It’s still included as part of the airport funding bill," Aase continued, confirming that the $1 million rider is still attached to the AIR 21 bill. "Congress is still working on the bill. It passed the House overwhelmingly in June, but it has yet to pass in the Senate or go through conference committee."

Aase said Gutknecht expected to see the AIR 21 passed by Congress before they adjourn for the year in very early November or late October.

Mayor Bonnie Rietz said Gutknecht was a little more optimistic when he spoke to her a week ago. He expressed hopes to Rietz that the bill would be among the first passed when Congress goes back in session.

"Later is probably his more conservative estimate," Rietz said Thursday. "Whenever the bill passes, as soon as the funding comes through we’ll start moving ahead with the process."

In the meantime, the city engineering department is working on Phase I of the acquisition process, which will expedite Phase II, the actual buying part of the acquisition.

"The council may even consider going 50/50 with the state to get some of this done before the bill passes," Erichson said. "Then we’ll be ready to start the acquisition/relocation part of the project when the federal funding comes through."

So, while funding could be here before Christmas, odds are that acquisition wouldn’t begin before 2000. Currently the city is negotiating with a company to handle acquisitions; engineering firms for the project have been interviewed but no offers extended.