The Highlander Neighborhood Monthly

 

“I could be wrong by 200 trees one way or the other, but there could be more than 1,000 trees involved in their plan,” Hayman explains. “I don’t know how you can justify that. It works to the airport authority’s advantage to not know how many trees are involved, because it’s scary when somebody says it’s a thousand trees.”

 

The issue has galvanized the residents around Bowman Field and led to three contentious, capacity-filled meetings – two held by the LRAA and one sponsored by 8th District Metro Councilman Tom Owen. The controversy began last December when the LRAA sent letters to 500 homes that could be affected by its proposed “Bowman Field Airport Area Safety Program.” 

 

Trish Burke, an LRAA spokesperson, says the Federal Aviation Authority mandated that Bowman Field update its layout plan, but doing so meant the airport had to come into compliance with the Terminal Instruments Procedures (TERPs), guidelines that regulate the approach and departure surfaces for aircraft that use satellite-based navigational systems like GPS. 

 

The FAA adopted the TERPs in 2007 to deal with obstructions around airports. At that time, regional airports were given a blanket exemption from the rules until they reached a trigger that would require them to comply.  Burke says updating the layout plan is one of those triggers.

 

“As soon as we realized the impact (the safety plan) might have on the neighbors,” she says, “the authority scheduled two public briefings and sent letters to homeowners. We actually did more than the FAA requires because we want to be a good neighbor. This is not an expansion of the airport; we want people to understand that.”

 

However, residents are wary because the plan does include money for the LRAA to buy easements and increase airspace. This issue is something that rattles homeowners since they cannot refuse to sell. The LRAA has condemnation powers so it could use eminent domain to get its way. 

 

Hayman says the loss of so many trees could have an environmental impact on the community, yet the LRAA will not know how many trees will be impacted until an inventory analysis is done. That will happen after the safety plan is officially adopted. The airport authority has offered to plant two trees for every one it cuts down, but it is unlikely that it would be a fair trade. The trees in the affected areas – white pines, oaks and maples that grow from 50 to 90 feet – have been estimated by a national arborist to each be worth $2,000 to $59,000. Hayman says replacing them with smaller trees means the homeowner loses property value.

 

But the LRAA plan does allow some trees to be taller than others. The ones closer to the airport on Pee Wee Reese Road might be trimmed as low as 23 feet, but those closer to Bardstown Road might be allowed to grow up to 60 feet. The tragedy, Hayman says, is that in some cases the trees will be smaller than the man-made objects around them. “The airplane hangar (at Bowman Field) looks like it’s 35, 40 feet. That stays,” Hayman says. “The billboard down there at Taylorsville Road, that stays even though it looks like it intrudes into the airspace. If they are going to make an exception for a 35-, 40-foot hangar why can’t they make an exception for a tree that is not even as high as the hangar?”

 

To make sure their interests are represented, some of the disgruntled Seneca Gardens and Kingsley residents are working with two lawyers, Tom Fitzgerald of the Kentucky Resources Council, and private attorney Leslie Barras. Barras says the residents are experiencing something that is going on around regional airports all over the nation when the TERPs rules are triggered. 

 

So far, all the FAA has authorized is an obstruction study, which will list the number of obstructions in the airspace. After that there will be an environmental study and time for community input before the FAA weighs its options. Barras says the tree-cutting is not a foregone conclusion: “It’s a balance, and I think the FAA rules recognize that there is a balance. They want to promote safety and at the same time recognize that there is a community quality of life. This is only the beginning of a long process.”

 

There are some options to the tree-cutting plan. Ideally, Barras would like the LRAA to ask for an FAA exemption to the rules. Just last year, the agency granted United Parcel Service and FedEx pilots an exemption from the rest of the rules that apply to their commercial counterparts. 

 

Barras say historic preservation issues may also come into play.  Bowman Field, which was established in 1919, is one of the oldest continually operating airports in North America. Three of the 17 buildings on the 426-acre airport are on the National Register of Historic Places – the Administration Building, the Curtiss Flying Service Hangar and the Army Air Corps Hangar. Barras suggests that some of the neighborhoods or landscape around the airport may also be eligible for historic preservation. 

 

Angela Burton, a Seneca Gardens resident who has also been a leading opponent of the LRAA proposal, has another option – scaling back the service at Bowman Field, which is a reliever facility for Louisville International Airport. Burton says the TERPs come into play because Bowman is seeing more jet traffic. At the meeting held by Councilman Owen on Jan. 19, Burton asked LRAA Executive Director Charles T. “Skip” Miller if the LRAA had considered downgrading the flights at Bowman, which currently loses $1 million annually. Miller responded that the LRAA would keep the status quo because as a reliever airport Bowman has benefits beyond the profit-loss margin. Miller estimates that the airport pumps $8 million annually into the local economy.

 

Bowman Field does not keep records of the number of aircraft that use GPS for landings or departures at the airport. Miller says the FAA keeps those figures, but he didn’t have them at hand. According to the Seneca Gardens and Kingsley residents who filed a Freedom of Information Act request, only 12.1 percent of the aircraft at Bowman used instrument-guided landing last year. This reinforces the view that the LRAA is preparing for increased corporate jet traffic since those aircraft are more likely to use the up-to-date technology.

 

“The LRAA is interested in getting the maximum amount of utilization out of the airport,” says Bob Hawley, a Kingsley resident and retired Air Force pilot. “The community wants to protect the trees. Somewhere in between is the solution.” 

 

Hawley believes the LRAA did itself a disservice by presenting the tree trimming as the only option to remove obstructions. Hawley says the FAA is concerned about departure surfaces, but they don’t automatically have the right to clear them or cut things down. Hawley says the LRAA probably would prefer the FAA choose to get rid of the trees because it would attract more air traffic to Bowman Field.

 

One voice that has been absent so far from this debate are the people who make the final decisions. “The airport authority has had two meetings,” Hayman says. “They blame this on the FAA, but the FAA was not there to question. So, twice they’ve had meetings without the most important people there to question.” 

 

LRAA spokesperson Burke says nobody in the Louisville FAA office deals with airspace issues. Councilman Owen offered to pay for an FAA representative to visit Louisville from New York but the federal agency declined. The Highlander did talk to Arlene Salac, an FAA spokesperson, who forwarded information on TERPs, but did not comment on the Bowman Field controversy. In fact, the only statement from the FAA on the matter came in a Jan. 3 Courier-Journal article where Winsome Lenfert, manager of the airports division in the FAA’s southern regional office in Atlanta, defended the LRAA’s safety plan, saying that without it Bowman Field would become almost unusable. 

 

Lenfert told the Courier that trees obstructing one approach forced the closure last year of one runway on nights when there was poor visibility from inclement weather. Lenfert also said that the FAA recently granted a waiver to Bowman so it could keep using a second runway during those conditions, despite encroachment by a tree into protected airspace. 

 

Hayman says Seneca Gardens and Kingsley residents have no problem with the FAA promoting safety at Bowman Field or even with the airport making a profit. But he doesn’t think it should come at the cost of the homeowners’ quality of life and property values. “The scale is important,” he adds. “If we know how big the airspace is, the number of trees involved, we know the cost to the community. But they don’t tell us that because it’s better for them not to let people know how big this is. That’s why I’m going to go count these trees. There is an issue of trust here.”