Airport Expansion Update

Warwick Mayor Scott Avedisian is dissatisfied with the Green Airport runway expansion evaluation and planning process. From Matt Bower of the Warwick Daily Times…

After reviewing the recent Environmental Impact Statement on the expansion of T.F. Green Airport, Mayor Scott Avedisian said he is not happy with the study.

Avedisian yesterday announced that the city has submitted a 73-page response to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) concerning the impact study, stating the city considers the study "incomplete and in need of improvement in data collection, independent narrative and comprehensive threshold assessment."

The city's response faults "the methodology used to determine the environmental, health, noise and air quality, traffic and community impacts" expansion would have….

Avedisian said the city strongly objects to the assessment that 350 families that would be forced out of their homes would easily find affordable housing elsewhere in the city, and questions the stated economic benefits brought on by expansion.

"There's nothing left here that's affordable and comparable. They can move lines around a map all they want, but to us those aren't lines, they're people," he said. "I don't believe it's rational or reasonable to assume that 350 displaced families will be able to find another place to live [in the city]."

The public will get a closer look at the environmental consequences of five alternative plans to extend Green Airport’s main runway June 14 at a meeting held by the Federal Aviation Administration at the Crowne Plaza Hotel. Originally scheduled for 6:30, a presentation will start at 5:30 so as to accommodate Mayor Scott Avedisian….According to a FAA press release, the agency and the consultants, Vanasse Hangen Bruslin, Inc. now have enough information to evaluate the environmental impacts and the feasibility of the five options, all calling for a 9,350-foot runway. Also, according to the release, the FAA has “worked closely with the federal and state agencies and the City of Warwick in preparing and reviewing the findings of the preliminary environmental impact analysis.”

“Working closely,” is not how Avedisian sees it. He said last week that the scheduling of the meeting came as a surprise, which, he added, should indicate how closely the FAA and the city have been working.

Peters apologized for lack of communication over the scheduling of the meeting, adding that both the FAA and VHB have kept city principal planner William DePasquale informed throughout the process....

Avedisian finds fault with the study in that it rationalizes that existing conditions are already degraded and any additional impacts would not be significant. He says that process “does not properly recognize the cumulative effects on the community”…. He says the city “demands, and deserves, a more comprehensive assessment of the existing and long term health, social and environmental impacts on our community beyond bare-minimum analysis.”