May 17, 2005
Da Airport
Very interesting page one article this morning on the future of Louis Armstrong International Airport. The two proposals outlined both have a lot of good points. The notion of building in the Bonnet Carre' Spillway sounds odd at first, but if the water flow can be directed so that we can still re-direct the river in flood conditions, what the heck. One of the downsides of the spillway location is that it's just north of the Waterford 3 nuclear power plant:
Though the Corgan study suggests an airport and flood relief are compatible in the spillway, the site has other problems. The spillway is almost directly across the river from Entergy's Waterford 3 nuclear power plant, and catastrophic damage could ensue if an airliner crashed into it. The Corgan study suggests that the runway alignments could be altered, however, to keep normal air traffic away from the plant.
This is a legitimate concern, but when you consider that the current airport is almost due north of Cytec's plant in Waggaman, you realize we're already living with this threat. The Waterford 3 tower is hardened a lot more than the ammonia storage facilities at the Cytec plant. If a jet were to come down now in the scenario mentioned for the new airport, it would land smack into a lot of things made at that plant that are very nasty to breathe.
The proposal to build a new airport in New Orleans East has one big thing going for it for the city--it's actually in the city. It's the most expensive option, however, because it requires that the land be reclaimed from Lake Pontchartrain. Still, it might be worth the $8.5billion price tag to not have to deal with Phil Capitano.
Speaking of Capitano, you gotta love a mayor who advocates kicking his city's largest economic incubator out of town. Kenner stands to take a huge hit if either of these proposals becomes reality:
"There would be a lot of opportunities for redevelopment," said David Campbell, Kenner's representative on the Aviation Board. "But Kenner would lose a lot of revenue both from the airport and from businesses in the city around it.
"It's the situation where you should be careful what you wish for," he said, referring to many Kenner residents' complaints about its noisy neighbor.
What's encouraging about this report is that the city is actually looking forward a bit:
The new openness of Armstrong officials to other sites comes at a time when political opposition to expansion of the airport, owned by New Orleans but located mostly in Kenner and partly in St. Charles Parish, is mounting. In addition, research suggests air traffic won't grow enough to crowd Armstrong's existing runways for at least a decade, which gives New Orleans officials more time than they thought they had to examine the airport's future.
Translation: the political hacks that have dominated airport management for so long have concluded that there's no way to make a quick buck on the airport, so it's time to go after the slower (but much larger) buck. That's a good thing for the city in the long run.
EDIT: Here are the graphics from the story:
