Written by James Bruggers
With frustration growing about plans to remove trees in the neighborhoods, parks and golf courses that surround Bowman Field, airport authorities have moved a public meeting Wednesday to a bigger venue and a Louisville Metro Council member has scheduled his own for later in the month.
“A lot of people are upset, and I am upset,” said Councilman Tom Owen, whose district includes parts of such communities as Seneca Gardens and Kingsley, which airport officials have said could lose some shade trees. “Nobody wants their trees cut down, and nobody wants their trees trimmed, and I don’t want them trimmed or cut down either.”
Owen said he and others still have questions about the proposal, which was announced in early December and presented in a public workshop Dec. 19. One key question, he said, is whether the Louisville Regional Airport Authority has any discretion in meeting what airport staff describe as a safety mandate from the Federal Aviation Administration.
FAA officials said they don’t have much discretion.
Without a tree-cutting program along the approaches to the airport’s runways, “it almost begins to make the airport unusable,” said Winsome Lenfert, manager of the airports division in the FAA’s southern regional office in Atlanta. She said that, by accepting federal funds for airport projects, airport managers are required “to maintain clear approaches.”
As an airport’s approach systems become more modern, based on global-positioning systems, there are new requirements for expanded airspace protections, she said. And the Louisville airport already has a problem meeting those requirements, she said.
Trees obstructing one approach forced the closure last year of one runway on nights when there is poor visibility from inclement weather, Lenfert said. The FAA also recently granted a waiver to Bowman so it could keep using a second runway during those conditions, despite some encroachment by a tree into protected airspace, she said.
The waiver was granted because the tree was trimmed, she said, but the solution is considered temporary.
She said the airport is doing the right thing by proposing a comprehensive tree assessment and removal program, starting with a study of what trees are potentially troublesome.
“Up until this point in time, the airport has been kind of piecemealing their obstruction removal, taking a tree here, removing a tree there, dealing with an individual homeowner,” she said.
Adding to the confusion, however, is that the airport staff and the FAA are putting out conflicting messages.
Charles T. “Skip” Miller, executive director of the airport authority, said he was not aware that the FAA had granted any kind of waiver to keep a Bowman Field runway open.
And while Lenfert said the airport authority will be required to conduct an environmental assessment of the project, Miller said such a study may not be needed.
He said that would be determined only after a consulting firm looks property by property to identify the scope of the problem. As of now, he said, nobody knows how many trees may have to be removed or trimmed.
FAA officials insisted, however, that such a study would have to be conducted. FAA spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said the scope of the study would be determined by the initial research.
“I don’t think everything is transparent,” said Angela Burton, a Seneca Gardens resident who lives near one of the runways and is concerned about the waiver as well as potential loss of trees. She said the authority’s initial workshop with separate information stations on Dec. 19 was “nothing short of chaos” with “a crowd of people trying to ask questions” and getting few answers.
“I think they left feeling more confused and more angry,” she said.
Miller said the public workshop allowed officials to explain the necessity of the program and how it would work, including how airport officials would compensate homeowners and replace large trees with two smaller trees.
Authority spokeswoman Trish Burke said officials changed the format for their previously scheduled second workshop this Wednesday to address some of the concerns. They also moved it from a Bowman Field building to the Breckinridge Inn.
It will include a brief presentation from airport officials and an opportunity for residents to submit written questions for answers.
Owen said he has scheduled a meeting for Jan. 19 with a more open format and has invited airport officials to attend. Airport officials have not decided if they will participate, Burke said.
At Owen’s forum, people will be allowed to ask their questions themselves, and make comments, in a moderated format.
He said the public needs to be able to “express emotionally their opinions, their fears. … That is the purpose of a public meeting.”
Louisville environmental attorney Tom FitzGerald, director of the Kentucky Resources Council, said his group also is involved.
“We are going to do everything in our power to ensure that any adverse impacts of this proposal are minimized, and first (to determine whether) there are legitimate safety issues here.”
Louisville Metro Parks also has concerns, spokeswoman Julie Kredens said.
“Mainly because there’s just not yet enough information to determine the extent of the impact and, like other property owners in that neighborhood, we’re awaiting more information,” she said.
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