A gravel base for a new taxiway at the Sussex County Airport is part of the improvements work crews have made in a runway expansion project this year. Work on the runway expansion has ended for the winter and will resume in 2013.
Photo Credit: James Fisher
GEORGETOWN — Work on extending Sussex County Airport’s longest runway, part of a economic development initiative backed with federal grants, is on pause for the winter months.
James A. Hickin, the airport’s manager, said contractors working since August, when the project started, have cut 40 acres of trees from the approach route to the runway and cleared the path of a new taxiway at the other end, laying down a base of gravel in preparation for paving. The crews also enlarged a stormwater pond.
“We’re at the end of the first phase right now,” Hickin said. “The only thing we weren’t able to do is the paving of the taxiway. The weather kind of got to us.”
Air and surface temperatures must be 45 degrees or warming to do the paving, he said, and many days were too cold to allow it.
“It’s not really a setback,” Hickin said. “It’ll probably help us in the long run, because the base that’s there will compact over the winter.”
The project, when finished, will take the runway from 5,000 feet to 5,500 feet in length. An eventual extension to 6,000 feet would allow a major employer at the airport, PATS Aircraft, to service larger planes, up to a Boeing 757.
Last year, the FAA agreed to pay nearly all of the cost of the first 500-foot extension, and the county started that work while still pressing for federal grants that would allow a second expansion.
PATS and Sussex County earlier this year received a $3.7 million state grant to pay for studies on how a road near the airport could be rerouted to allow for the full 6,000-foot runway.
The improvements underway at the airport, Hickin said, also involve replacing an existing runway lighting system with LED bulbs.
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