Petition Opposes Expansion at the Aurora Airport
The Aurora Airport (KUAO), owned and operated by the State of Oregon, is located midway between two commercial airports that already have runways in place that can accommodate business and corporate jets. Both have experienced a significant drop in operations in recent years. The operational count at the 3,300 acre Portland International Airport, (PDX), 22 miles north of KUAO, peaked in 1998 at around 328,000 annual landings and take-offs. During the ensuing 25 years that number declined by more than 40 percent. In 2023, PDX logged 190,150 annual operations, 4,000 fewer than in 1975. (Sources: Portland International Airport Noise Abatement Plan, Volume 2: Appendices. August 1996. Table 11. Pg. 46 and Port of Portland Statistics webpage)
Along a similar vein, a review of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Terminal Area Forecast data on McNary Field (KSLE), located in Salem 23 miles south of KUAO, reveals that McNary logged 50% fewer operations in 2022 than it did in 2007. What these numbers indicate is that regionally there is an excess of capacity at Oregon's airports, thereby refuting the argument that additional capacity at KUAO is required. Even if the need were there, no community should be subjected to noisy, toxic aircraft foisted upon them without a democratic vote of the people.
The Hillsboro Airport, the largest general aviation airport in Oregon, is located 19 miles from KUAO. This facility is one of the biggest polluters in Washington County. Many residents of this jurisdiction are routinely doused with noise, lead, and other pollutants by student and private pilots flying in and out of HIO. Like KUAO, it caters to a self entitled few at the expense of the greater good. Increasing the number of gas-guzzling private jets would only add to the environmental degradation perpetrated by this airport.
According to a 2/14/2024 Oregon Public Broadcasting News report, "From 2017 to 2022, Oregon lost 4%...over 660,000 acres of farmland despite land use laws that restrict development unrelated to agriculture on land zoned for farming." Source: Oregon Continues to Lose Farmland, Some Advocates Say That Raises Red Flags.
There is no demonstrated need to sacrifice prime farmland to the special interests of a handful of private and corporate jet owners. Moreover, it is environmentally irresponsible and morally indefensible for the State of Oregon and the FAA to invest public money into promoting and funding this deceptive, heavy-handed master planning process.
Oregon Aviation Watch urges readers to sign this petition.
Friends of French Prairie Advances People's Petition Opposing Expansion of the Aurora State Airport
August 1, 2024
AURORA, OR: Today the nonprofit land-use conservation organization Friends of French Prairie announces the establishment of a people's petition opposed to the planned expansion of the Aurora State Airport. Ben Williams, President of Friends of French Prairie, said that "The Federal Aviation Administration and Oregon Department of Aviation (ODA) have boxed-in the public with plans to expand the airport onto prime farmland and take private property, seek to encourage more operations by larger and heavier aircraft, and ignore current environmental, transportation and safety concerns."
"Since neither federal nor state aviation agencies appear to take seriously the concerns of local-area residents, businesses and cities, Friends of French Prairie is advancing a people's petition to demonstrate the massive local opposition to expansion of the Aurora State Airport that exists," said Williams. The petition is addressed to the primary federal and state elected officials who represent the airport area, including Senators Wyden and Merkley, Congresswoman Salinas and Governor Kotek.
The Aurora State Airport is undergoing a convoluted, four-year-long master-planning process that demonstrates a pre-determined outcome favoring commercial interests and airport developers by ignoring key data that demonstrates declining operations by larger aircraft and falsifying projected future operations. It includes a Planning Advisory Committee that was informed that they would be a sounding board but would make no recommendations and that ODA staff would "be the final decision-making authority." ODA has also made public participation in the master plan process difficult by requiring pre-registration to attend public meetings, running out of public-comment forms at the one open-house event, and stacking the planning advisory committee with airport expansion interests seeking tax-payer subsidies while ignoring suggestions and concerns raised by those who represent local jurisdictions, community members and land-use advocates.
The petition, available online by clicking here, cites a number of concerns ignored by the pending Aurora State Airport master plan, including:
- Health concerns from leaded aviation fuel used by aircraft.
- Diminished quality-of-life with increasing numbers of low-flying and loud aircraft due to a non-mandatory voluntary noise-abatement plan that many aircraft operators ignore.
- Reduced residential real-estate property values due to aircraft operations at the airport.
- Increased generation of greenhouse-gas carbon emissions contrary to federal and state climate goals.
- Environmental damage to significant natural resources, including contaminated stormwater run-off directly impacting endangered salmon-bearing waterways
- Public-safety concerns by an airport that the FAA states is violating aviation safety standards, endangering thousands of local residents for the benefit of a few select special interests.
- Proposed massive, multi-million dollar public tax-payer subsidies to commercial interests at airport for government to condemn/acquire adjacent private properties and move Wilsonville-Hubbard State Highway 551 or airport's air traffic control tower for expanded airport.
- Detrimental impacts to the important agricultural farming sector of our economy by artificially inflating farmland values due to land speculation.
- Poor public precedent to reward land speculators who seek to flip farmland into airport use located outside of an urban growth boundary.
- Inadequate public facilities for an urbanized airport use in a rural area without proper aircraft fire-fighting capacity, water treatment, sanitary sewer and stormwater drainage, and accessible only by narrow county roads without shoulders or sidewalks or public-transit service.
- Lack of any substantial study of existing airport environmental conditions, including appropriate public utilities, Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake impacts, and the presence of EPA-identified PFAS "forever chemicals" on site.
- Negative impacts to other regional airports, including Salem, McMinnville, Hillsboro, Portland and Troutdale, all of which are located in cities in compliance with Oregon's land-use laws and are operating substantially below capacity.
With five airports in the region having runways over 5,000 feet long that receive urban services from cities and are operating below capacity with room to grow without displacing agricultural land, and an airport master plan process with insufficient alternatives analysis, there is no demonstrable need to expand the Aurora State Airport. However, FAA has informed ODA that they may not consider alternatives to keep the Aurora Airport as it is, but must only consider alternatives to expand the airport.
In addition to primarily benefitting private interests, the proposed Aurora State Airport expansion appears to be a self-serving exercise by the Oregon Department of Aviation, as the agency's primary source of revenue is taxes on the sale of aviation fuel. The more larger aircraft that the Department of Aviation can attract to the airport, the more money that the agency can generate, despite negative impacts to farmers, residents, the environment and climate-change goals.
The petition requests intervention by the federal and state elected officials to require the federal and state aviation agencies to select an Aurora State Airport Master Plan alternative that keeps the airport as it is within its current footprint without unwarranted expansion.
Founded in 2006, Friends of French Prairie is an independent nonprofit land-use conservation organization that is a local affiliate of the statewide 1000 Friends of Oregon land-use watchdog group.
The Proposed Aurora Airport Expansion in Context
The proposed Aurora State Airport project is just the latest in an alarming trend of frivolous, expensive GA airport expansions. For more background, see the very informative article from Aviation Impact Reform entitled Aurora Airport is an Example of How GA Airports are Changing for the Worse.
As stated in that posting, "The current KUAO [Aurora] Airport Master Plan is an excellent example of the gross inequities between the few who benefit from airport expansion and the many who are impacted in surrounding communities."
| © Oregon Aviation Watch | Contact Us |  Jump to Top |