Upcoming Environmental Study Discussed By SCRAA
Members of the South Central Regional Airport Agency met this past week in Pella.
Pella, Iowa – The South Central Regional Airport Agency (SCRAA) held its quarterly meeting this past week on February 24, 2015.
No members of the public spoke to the board, so the next item of business was the selection of board officers for the fiscal year of 2015-16.
No changes were made in officers, with Jim Hansen remaining as Chairman, David Barnes as Vice-Chairman and Joe Warrick as Secretary.
The next resolution for the evening was the approval of the 2015-16 budget. The SCRAA is required to annually submit an operating and capital budget to the City of Oskaloosa and to the City of Pella.
The budget this year is as follows: included is $15,100 in operating expenses, with $100,000 in capital expenditures for the FAA planning studies for the new regional airport. That $100,000 is reimbursed at 90% by the FAA.
The Board approved the next fiscal year budget for 2015-16.
Jerry Searle, an airport planner contracted by the SCRAA, talked about the upcoming timeline of plans to be approved by the FAA. Currently, the Board is waiting to hear final remarks from the FAA on the airport layout plan, and the airport master plan for FAA acceptance.
Those two plans must be accepted by the FAA before moving onto the environmental assessment study, which is planned to be completed by the end of the 2015 calendar year.
“After that, the FAA will make an environmental determination,” says Searle. If the FAA finds there is no significant environmental impact, “then the board may elect to proceed with land acquisition”.
If an environmental impact is detected, Searle said that the impact will be quantified as significant or less than significant “and then identify mitigation action,” to address the environmental impact.
“There is no predetermined outcome at this point,” says Searle. “We simply go through the process step by step.”
Jim Hansen, Chairman of the South Central Regional Airport Agency (SCRAA) explained the process the board is taking in submitting plans to the FAA. “It’s a step by step process and you can’t proceed to the next step until you finish the first. So once we have an approval of the airport layout plan, we’ll have our consultant proceed with the environmental assessment, which is a fairly in-depth process that he expects to complete by the end of the year. The goal of that being the FAA granting a finding of no significant environmental impact, at which point we can proceed with land acquisition, but not before.”
Funding for land acquisition requires the cities to purchase the land and then be reimbursed by the FAA. The timing of reimbursement is based upon the application for reimbursement by the SCRAA. “There will be some up-front costs by the cities of Pella and Oskaloosa, and they’ve worked out, in the plan, how they expect to pay for that,” says Hansen.
Those funds will come from the sale of unnecessary lands associated with the current airports of Oskaloosa and Pella.
