Friends of PFN, Inc.

3513 Rosewood Circle

Lynn Haven, FL 32444-5643

Tel/Fax:  (850)522-9544

 

To:  Ms. Virginia Lane      

Federal Aviation Administration      

Orlando Airports District Office      

5950 Hazeltine National Drive      

Orlando, FL 32822

                                                                                            Date: 01/27/2005

 

Re: Panama City Bay County Int’l Airport

      Draft Environmental Impact Statement   -   Comments

      Or,  “A WestBay Fairy Tale and other Children’s Stories”

 

Ms Lane,

 

FAIRY TALE

             The following comments and attachments are in addition to those made on behalf of the Friends of PFN at the January 11^th FAA-DEIS public hearing.    At that hearing the feeling was that of listening to a fairy tale as the proponents stood and argued the supposed benefits of closing downtown PFN and building a new land of Oz in the far distant lands of WestBay.  Our children have been led astray.   Our adults are being treated as children by the Sponsor and their proponents.

 

 TIME

             While that hearing may have been in general accordance with NEPA guidelines, we found it to be lacking in true concern for the public’s opinions on this important issue.   The time restrictions placed on both individual presentations (3-6 minutes) and upon the venue for the evening (must vacate the room no later than 9:30 pm) were hardly appropriate for an issue of this magnitude and importance to the community.  That and the unfortunate release of the DEIS during the Christmas holiday season and failure of your office to provide a reasonable extension of time for reply.  

 

 

PUBLIC OPINION MATTERS

             In the informal show-n-tell session we were frankly astonished at the attitude expressed by you, when told the fact that the Bay County citizens had voted 54% - 46% against building a new airport - at any cost.   Your response was “ well, how many citizens actually participated in the vote?”  Is it necessary to remind you that, in our system of government, issues are decided by those voters who show up at the polls, regardless of the percentage of turnout.  In fact the turnout was quite substantial for that type of election, a Democrat primary with Republican voting allowed only on the airport issue - precisely because the airport issue was on the ballot.  Your comment was a parroting of the line chosen by the sponsor and their supporters to belittle their stunning loss on this issue at the polls in March of 2004.  If you had been in Tallahassee with our group of concerned citizens this April, you would have seen, first hand, the impact that this referendum had on those elected representatives who know how to count votes and their meaning.  The effect was hardly trivial and any efforts to dismiss it as such are naive.  We were also astonished by your personal objections to the taping of comments by FAA’s paid consultants, including yourself.  How, why, on what basis  could an accurate record of the conversations be counter to the public good?   What could be said that would need later to be denied.  The only bad outcome that I can imagine, from the FAA’s viewpoint  would be that an FAA employee’s, consultant’s, or contractor’s serious ignorance of the facts or circumstances of the immediate case might be exposed and documented.  Would that be news to your office?

 

NEWS

         It cannot be news to you, or the FAA, that :

           - the citizen’s voices have been severely muted or ignored in the Airport Authority’s rush to a land deal.

           - our local newspaper of record, the News Herald, has been a cheerleader for the airport relocation - to the extent of suppressing stories from the “other side”, avoiding a clear factual debate, and even “forgetting” to run ads paid for by those opposing the move.

          - in Bay County the Good-ole-Boys gather in their “backrooms” to decide where and how our money will be spent to their advantage and who will be appointed to shepherd those projects.

          - a “Perfect Storm” of campaign managers, contributors, lobbyists,  politicians, political slush funds,  consultants and compliant - poorly informed- Airport Authority Board members have been the driving force on this proposed project since day one.

          - hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of dollars have been spent by the advocates on PR campaigns, continuing to this day,  in unsuccessful attempts to deceive Bay County residents about the suitability and safety of PFN for all current and future operations.

         - no member of the current, or prior, Airport Authority Board has any semblance of aviation or airport education, training, qualifications or experience that would argue their competence to judge the validity of their consultants’ work or your conclusions -  none, nada, zip, zero.  It is as if a landscape architect were being asked to affirm or confirm the suitability of an airport and airspace configuration.

         - land value increases in the hundreds of millions of dollars will accrue to, and benefit, the St Joe company if/when an airport is built in Westbay.  By their own words of this week, they have 4,900 housing units on hold and dependent upon the building of a new airport in WestBay.  At conservative current Bay county housing prices that is $225,000  x 4,900 = $1,102,500,000.   That is in excess of $1 Billion - with a “B”.   The land value appreciation alone on 4,900 lots - long since paid for in silviculture - based upon $30,000 building lots is a staggering $147 million.  This, and the land owner is expecting the County and State to provide the road, sewer, highway, fire, police and other infrastructure AND a $500 million airport. Nice deal if they can get it!!

 

YELLOW BRICK ROAD

            We are frankly astonished that the weight of paperwork and dollars spent on consultants’ self-serving paperwork is offered as a justification for an unjustifiable project.   It does not matter how much “they” try to squeeze the proposed airport into a mold that fits FAA standards - in the end their project is indefensible on both aviation and ecological terms.  The proponents’ talk about deconflicting airspace, promised future low fares, opportunities for growth, better jobs for our children are simply Pied Piper calls to the uninformed.   They would take this County down the Yellow Brick road to visit the Wizard of Oz and will discover too late, at the end, that the Wizard is a great letdown - that there is no pot of gold at the end of a relocated airport rainbow. That they have simply destroyed a totally functional downtown airport and thousands of acres of irreplaceable wildlife habitat and wetlands to satisfy the selfish economic enhancement goals of political patrons.  All of that AND greatly inconveniencing the vast majority of Bay County and surrounding residents whose trip to the new distant  airport will become hours, not minutes away.

 

PILOTS KNOW

        We have polled every FAA licensed pilot in the Bay county area.   These pilots are from all aspects of aviation -  military, civilian, private, commercial, airlines, charters, flight instructors, aircraft owners and renters.  They understand intuitively what is involved in successful airports, when those airports are cramped and inadequate, when relief is needed.  Some have flown fully loaded jumbo jet DC-10's and L-1011's into similarly constrained LaGuardia and Reagan Nat’l airports on a daily basis.  They break out in derisive laughter at the Sponsor’s allegations that PFN runways are short and unsafe.  Of the 507 active addresses, a remarkable 38% responded.   Of those 191 responses,   167 or 87 % saw no reason to move or close downtown PFN.    We are attaching the entire survey response as both a summary of data, and as the only public comments made by most of these pilots on this issue.  Many took significant time to write detailed reasons for their answers.. We therefore ask that you treat each of the attached survey forms as a separate individual comment on the DEIS rather than a single reply to be  lumped together as if they were form letters.

 

FALLACIES

              Of all the fallacies, wishful fantasies, and fairy tales  put forward by the Sponsor and their compliant advocates, some stand out as being more egregious and outrageous than the others:

                - that PFN is straining to handle current and future air traffic.

                - that PFN’s runways are too short for airline operations.

                - that PFN is unsafe by any measure or standard.

                - that PFN’s almost-new airline terminal is incapable of handling future needs.

                - that future General Aviation traffic will be inhibited by PFN’s “short” runways.

                -  that it is necessary to close downtown PFN in order to afford a new West Bay airport.

                -  that fairly inexpensive alternatives  to closing downtown PFN are not viable.

               - that closing a current and important economic engine, PFN, will somehow benefit the region

               - that a WestBay airport will be significantly closer to Panama City Beach and South Walton County residents than the current PFN (perhaps 1 mile closer by road!!). Except for those few who live or work North of the intersection of Hwy 79 and Back Beach Rd.

               - that new pavement will bring new airline service

               - that moving to WestBay will decrease conflicts (non-existent at present) with military air traffic when in fact it will put air operations in closer constant proximity to Eglin AFB’s Restricted airspace.  There are many airport/airspace environments in the US with similar or more constrained proximity issues: Greater San Diego, SFO-OAK,  Metropolitan NY (where LGA -JFK distance and runway alignments are essentially the same as PFN-PAM), even Rapid City SD - Ellsworth AFB at just 7.3 nm.

              - that a gain of 492 feet in runway length at a probable cost of $1 million per foot in WestBay has  a justifiable benefit-cost analysis.

             - that destroying approximately 2000 acres of wetlands is more environmentally sound than several dozens acres of fill into the bay at the current site.

             - that a several hundred foot rerouting of Hwy 390, already planned for rebuilding, is not a feasible alternative.

            - that destroying 207 homes in Forest Park would be required to retain downtown PFN when in-fact none would need be moved or destroyed.

          - that building a new airport is required to bring rental occupants to the surplus of condo rooms just built in SouthWalton County and now being built in Bay County.

          - that a new airport is required to relieve the General Aviation congestion at Destin.

          - that current high airfares at PFN are the result of current airport constraints rather than market factors.

          - AND that dozens of other erroneous, misleading, even fallacious claims have any merit whatsoever.

 

 

 

 CONCLUSION:

                      There are several ways to arrive at a proper answer on issues of this magnitude.  Dotting every “I” , crossing every “T”, filling every square and trying to digest and balance  the overwhelming amount of information is one way.  That method seriously risks losing sight of the forest for the trees.  We suggest the better way is step back and ask:

            Is the project justifiable on the surface of the issue?  Is PFN at/near its aviation capacity, does a new facility need to be built at great expense for purely aviation reasons.  Does the existing airport need to be sacrificed in the name of something new and “better”?   The answer is clear - with only 12 -15 daily commercial flights thru PFN it cannot make sense to argue that more capacity is needed - therefore build a new airport.  Double, triple, quadruple that traffic - the answer is still - NOT NEEDED.   The population base of Bay County and surrounds - even granted the most optimistic growth forecasts - will not generate a market large enough to justify a new facility within the current planning horizon.

          It is therefore the obligation and the duty of the FAA to tell the Sponsor, the Panama City Airport Authority Board, that this fairy tale is over.  To go to home, take 2 aspirin, and call back in 30 years to let us all know how things are going.

 

        Strong Letter to follow!

 

Sincerely yours,
Frank Gorham, President
Friends of PFN, Inc.