waste & abuse

0 Comments | Insight on the News, June 11, 2001 | by Sean Paige

Regulatory Reform and Airport Runways

The next time you're sitting on the tarmac of some airport stewing because your flight is leaving an hour-and-a-half behind schedule and is No. 23 for takeoff, don't take it out on the hapless flight attendant or the snot-nosed kid who keeps kicking your seatback.

Use that time and anger constructively by pondering, with a Zen master's detachment, the need to reform and streamline government environmental regulations that are blocking or severely slowing the construction of new airport runways or other infrastructure improvements in the United States. After you've done that--and your flight is still No. 23 for takeoff -- grab the Sky Phone, dial up the U.S. Capitol switchboard and entertain your congressman's receptionist with a saliva-spewing, obscenity-laced tirade!

On average, construction of a new airport runway takes more than a decade in the United States -- when one can be built at all -- and not just because cement dries slowly. It's because local, state and federal agencies all must sign off on the project and ensure that it complies with a mountain of relevant environmental rules and regulations. Of course the "public" also must have its say in the process, inviting time-consuming objections from, and negotiations with, every ax-grinding green group in a nation of malcontents.

Such complications mean that it will take Seattle's airport 15 years to build a proposed runway. It likely will take Atlanta's airport, the nation's busiest, a decade to build a new runway -- with three years consumed by environmental assessments alone. And when a new runway at Cleveland's airport is completed in 2003, it will be the culmination of a 13-year effort, including more than three years of environmental reviews and assessments.

At the same time that construction schedules have bogged down in "green" tape, travel volume steadily has risen. This has resulted in frequent delays (more than one-quarter of flights last year were late or canceled), safety worries and mounting passenger frustrations. And the bottlenecks are only expected to become more acute in the next 10 years as the volume of air traffic is projected to increase by nearly 40 percent.

More than 20 U.S. airports are planning to build new runways in the next decade to keep up with that growth, so a push is under way by the industry to begin streamlining and speeding the process. Though greens and noise-control groups oppose such reforms, legislation has been offered in the Senate that would allow government environmental reviews to be conducted concurrently, rather than one at a time. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reportedly is pushing for use of a single environmental assessment that would satisfy local, state and federal requirements. The FAA also is planning to increase the number of staff people assigned to work on environmental-impact statements, according to a report in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, as well as the number of environmental lawyers it has on staff.

Though airports aren't interested in bypassing existing environmental laws altogether, "what we want to do is figure out a way to coordinate that process so that it's not a series of overlapping jurisdiction and never-ending deadlines," one industry group representative told the paper.

RELATED ARTICLE: Bush Puts `Pork Parks' on Hold, Provoking Squeals from Congress

New memberships in the National Park of the Month Club have been suspended by the Bush administration. It wisely has declared a two-year moratorium on adding new units to the bloated, badly managed "system" until the National Park Service first addresses some fundamental housekeeping chores -- such as tackling a $5 billion maintenance backlog at existing parks, for instance.

"We are seeking a temporary moratorium on new park-unit designations or authorizations of new studies so that we can focus our existing staff and resources on taking care of what we now own" a Department of Interior official told Congress in March. The move caused consternation on Capitol Hill, where every member of Congress has some natural wonder or landmark or cultural site in his or her hometown worthy of inclusion in the National "Pork" Service.

President George W. Bush's campaign pledge to tackle the long-standing park-maintenance backlog won widespread approval at the time, and it became a matter of controversy only when living up to the promise imperiled congressional pork privileges. Whether the suspension actually prevents the establishment of new parks remains to be seen, however, since fewer and fewer parks actually are established based on thorough study and proper procedures. More often, they get tacked on as part of a catchall spending bill by congressional appropriators.

Regrettably, free-spending Democrats weren't the only ones squealing about what seems a sensible action. Seemingly oblivious to the ironies, Republicans are complaining the suspension may stop a pet pork park project of their own -- the designation of the boyhood home of a noted fiscal conservative, Ronald Reagan, as a national historical site.