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No Fill Drill

Watchdogs want more proof that San Francisco airport can’t solve its delay problems without building a new runway and filling the Bay, and airport officials promised early this year to give it. At a January meeting of the S.F. Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC), which regulates shoreline activities and Bay fill, commissioners requested more research into other ways to improve the airport, saying that all feasible no-fill, no-build alternatives must be exhausted before BCDC will issue a fill permit. Then in early February, an independent consultant to the Commission released a detailed review of airport efforts to explore no-fill alternatives and found them seriously lacking.

"To date, the airport has focused the bulk of its energy and resources on figuring out how to fill the Bay, not how to avoid it," says Save the Bay’s David Lewis, whose organization, like BCDC, is worried about irreversible damage to estuarine ecology from the up-to-58 million cubic yards of Bay fill required to support new runways. "They held an international design competition for runway designs. Why didn’t they hold it for better regional airport planning and new aviation technologies?"

The airport’s Lyn Calerdine says that preliminary data from its massive environmental impacts research effort, due out for public review by fall, suggests that "the runways themselves probably won’t do a lot of damage to Bay hydrology." The airport agreed last month, however, to do a more in-depth study of no-build options, following up on $2 million worth of "demand management" studies Calerdine says the airport has already done.

"We’re not convinced that even if they had new runways, it would stop delays, which are not only exacerbated by the weather, but also by labor disputes, outdated computer systems, the pressures of being a United hub, and the overall FAA management system," says BCDC’s Will Travis. "We want to see tests of better system management before we give any fill permits."

To this end, Charles River Associates will be looking into everything from strict restrictions on airport access (such as "slot controls" and bad weather capacity limits) and peak-hour pricing (charging airlines more money to use facilities in peak hours) to how to better cooperate with other regional airports on diverting flights in pea-soup conditions.

In the meantime, BCDC’s Travis says the amount of information on Bay ecology being pulled together in the forthcoming environmental impact report is "impressive," based on what he’s seen so far. He and Lewis are also happy that the airport has agreed to support reconvening a prestigious independent scientific panel (organized last year by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to map out airport environmental research goals) to hold a public meeting and comment on the draft EIS/EIR.

One part of the research Calerdine thinks may become useful to the whole region is the airport’s data on conceptual designs and hydrology for 35 potential mitigation sites around the Bay (38,000 acres). A fill permit would require any environmental damage to be mitigated with restoration elsewhere. While initial mitigation proposals zeroed in on Cargill’s shoreline salt ponds, Calerdine says studies are advancing on all possible projects. (Cargill’s latest offer, which may be taken up by state and federal resource agencies rather than the airport, seems to be the sale of its West Bay ponds and the release of its right to harvest salt in the Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge for a cool $300 million). "Our mitigation research created a bit of a land rush," admits Calerdine,"so we’d rather keep all options on the table as long as we can."

But Lewis says "It’s still premature to be discussing mitigation. They should stop saying ‘the runways are a done deal, don’t worry about the environmental damage, here’s our checkbook for restoration.’ Instead, they need to explore every alternative to filling the Bay."

Contact: Lyn Calerdine (650)821-2120; David Lewis (510)452-9261 or Will Travis (415)352-3600

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