Destination Unknown -- Airport! The Controversy

ONE word sums up the public's reaction to expanding Sea-Tac airport or planning for more planes in the sky over Puget Sound:

Don't.

Don't expand the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, don't add runways to any existing regional airport and don't replace Sea-Tac and start from scratch. Don't do anything to worsen already intolerable conditions or to despoil rural tranquility.

Instead, prepare for another brutal crawl toward a messy solution for another intractable urban problem.

The subject is airports, but the anger and distress could be over a landfill site or a sewage-treatment plant. Another noxious neighbor.

Because Puget Sound sits an equi distance from Asia and Europe, eager to serve a global economy, The Port of Seattle is duty-bound to promote trade, and airports.

A 30-year forecast predicts $1.3 billion in revenues and 60,000 jobs related to a strong local air-transport system, and bigger airports.

That causes people's blood to boil. Rising in opposition are residents who can marshal both passion and facts to show their emotional, physical and economic welfare is threatened.

"If the port persists in its third-runway ambitions, there will be a citizen uprising the likes of which has never been seen in the Seattle area," a member of Citizens Alternatives to Sea-Tac Expansion said to cheers at a May subcommittee hearing.

Anxiety radiates beyond south King County. Retirees and homeowners in the Skagit Valley fear Sea-Tac's problems may destroy their solitude.

AFTER 15 months of wrestling with a broad list of ways to keep air traffic moving past 2020, the Puget Sound Air Transportation Committee voted last month to explore four variations of a multiple airport scheme anchored by Sea-Tac.

Two more alternatives are the replacement of Sea-Tac, and Sea-Tac bolstered by new technology and ground transportation, but no new runways.

This review began in 1989, after the Port of Seattle, which operates Sea-Tac, was told the growth in flight operations would outstrip facilities by 2000.

The port joined with the Puget Sound Council of Governments to do a $249,000 regional study which is largely under written by the Federal Aviation Administration.

The working group is a 36-member panel of citizens, politicians, business and aviation interests and port officials from King, Pierce, Snohomish and Kitsap counties.

The initial finding boils down to one point: The region needs three IFR (instrument flight rules) runways to keep pace with growth into the next century.

That means one of three runway combinations:

-- Two at Sea-Tac and one at a supplemental airport elsewhere in the region.

-- One at Sea-Tac and two elsewhere.

-- Three at a brand new airport.

Opposition is intense to any changes near anyone's back yard.

Sea-Tac last year handled 355,000 plane departures or arrivals. The maximum capacity without significant service delays is 380,000 takeoffs or landings, which is expected by mid-decade.

Capacity in good weather is not an issue. The concern is keeping two streams of traffic moving in bad weather, which fits Sea-Tac conditions about half the time.

One quick-fix is extending an existing taxiway to 5,000 feet and converting it to a commuter runway. The $15 million investment would take any propeller craft, and add another 30,000 annual operations.

Construction of a third dependent runway at Sea-Tac is the issue that ignites passions in the nearby neighborhoods of SeaTac, Des Moines and Federal Way.

The runway would be built on airport property along Sea-Tac's western border at a cost that could exceed $300 million. A third IFR runway would provide enough physical separation to alternate two streams of planes in bad weather. This adjustment can carry Sea-Tac beyond 2010.

Opposition runs deep in south King County, where residents fear more noise, fumes, grit, traffic on local streets and decreased property values.

"It's hard to get people comfortable with the fact another runway doesn't mean 50 percent more of everything," said Joe Sims, director of planning at Sea-Tac. "It is the perception dilemma."

A third runway would require a larger buffer zone for noise and safety. Sims estimates that might eliminate three or four blocks of housing, perhaps 150 homes.

Sea-Tac is the hot spot, but it is not the solution to preventing an airborne traffic jam in commercial aviation. Changes at Sea-Tac alone would not be enough.

Population growth and travel times will focus the search for a supplemental airport in Snohomish and Pierce counties. A second airport with an expanded Sea-Tac could meet capacity forecasts through 2020 with a 13 percent reserve.

Paine Field near Everett is owned by Snohomish County, and is coveted by its neighbors. The airport's main runway is 9,010 feet long and can handle all sizes of commercial aircraft.

Paine presently has 170,000 operations a year, but the potential with the right mix of aircraft is as high as 450,000, according to airport director Bill Dolan.

Boeing manufactures 747 and 767 planes at Paine, and plant expansion is underway. Also prospering is Tramco, an airline-maintenance and overhaul specialist. Tramco expects to triple its work force to 3,000 by the end of the decade, and add hangar space to accommodate more wide-body planes.

But Snohomish County commissioners have affirmed their commitment to discourage airline activity, though perhaps accommodate some commuter service; and discourage repetitive operations, such as airline crew training.

Of the two possibilities farther north, Arlington is better suited as a supplemental airport site than Stanwood, according to early analysis. Stanwood has air-space problems with Whidbey Island Naval Air Station and Canadian air-traffic control.

Arlington is constricted by the Cascades, but considered roomy enough to support two runways.

To the south, McChord and Fort Lewis have civilian advocates, but the military has made it clear its open spaces are not available.

HIGH-SPEED rail as an alternative could reduce the need for short-distance flights and perhaps some airport expansion, but reality has not kept up with the vision. Projects in Florida and California were scrapped. A Texas consortium must raise $7 billion in private funds to link Dallas, Houston and San Antonio.

High-speed rail also figured into plans for a wayport at Moses Lake in Eastern Washington, virtually the only area enthusiastic about an airport. The idea was not advanced for further study.

Starting from scratch with a replacement for Sea-Tac will be studied, but is highly improbable. Fort Lewis has the largest patch of open space within reasonable distance of the state's population center.

Citizens from Stanwood to Gig Harbor cite demand management and new technology as the great salvation to flight and airport congestion.

"Demand management" induces or forces airlines to cut flights, consolidate their schedules and offer service in non-peak hours.

Industry representatives such as Alaska Airlines' Harry Lehr react to such talk as a direct assault on an airline's freedom and ability to compete.

Lehr is Alaska's director of planning and sits on the air-study committee. Demand management, he said, is a euphemism for supply management.

Boston's Logan Field tried to squeeze smaller commuter lines off the runway at peak hours by charging them more. Courts overturned the plan.

Changing travel habits is part of demand management, but reaction can be mixed. To wean travelers away from peak hours, airlines offer frequent service through the day, but then get rapped for having too many flights.

Demand management and new technology, such as microwave landing systems, might add 10 percent to Sea-Tac's capacity.

The airport hopes to be selected as a demonstration project for the MLS program, which would help with noise problems. The ability to follow a precise takeoff route keeps planes in corridors plotted to reduce noise problems.

HOW the committee arrived at its shortened list and how it proceeds with a recommendation, is a tangle of politics, perception and strategies:

-- The city of Seattle opposes a third runway and favors new runways near Fort Lewis. Expansion at Sea-Tac should be the last thing done, said Tom Tierney, Mayor Rice's deputy chief of staff.

-- King County Councilmen Paul Barden and Greg Nickels, who both sit on the air-study committee, voted against studying a third runway. Barden, who lost a home to earlier Sea-Tac expansion, argued the issue is governance and wants the Legislature involved.

-- Public hearings echoed the same sentiment; take airport operations away from the port and vest them in a state-created regional agency.

-- Alaska's Lehr favors expanding Sea-Tac capacity, and letting market force determine when and where a regional airport is built.

-- Defenders of Paine Field have changed tracks a couple of times. An early position said Sea-Tac had the capacity to handle all the forecast growth; there was no need to go elsewhere.

As technical reports undercut that argument, the position was revised to say don't expand Sea-Tac, but rather build two new runways elsewhere. Paine Field's one runway, combined with an expanded Sea-Tac, would be a possible, but short-sighted option.

But the county might be hard-pressed to argue jets operated by Alaska, or say, a new carrier, Southwest, are different from the jumbos that take off and land at Boeing and Tramco.

-- Another political element is the Legislature's creation of a state air transportation commission, which has a sweeping four-year charter to study commercial aviation.

The statewide body was a tactic to offset the influence of the regional study plan put together by the Port and COG. If the local study was a dark plot to expand Sea-Tac, another commission was needed as a counterbalance.

One bit of irony may be unexpected statewide interest in an expanded Sea-Tac. Communities east of the Cascades want Sea-Tac as the hub of their own air-carrier connections.

Now it is the technocrats' turn to take a dispassionate look at the options. Their report is due in early 1992, and committee recommendation would follow. After that, events are not clear.

If the conclusion is not accepted by the public, the state Legislature will have to resolve the differences, said Paige Miller, a Seattle Port commissioner and air-transport committee member.

Legally the port might be able to order airport expansion, but as a practical matter aggrieved citizens could appeal to lawmakers in Olympia to rein in the Port, a creation of the Legislature.