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HAILEY, Idaho (AP) — Blaine County commissioners are obstructing efforts to move the local airport out of Hailey by refusing to rezone potential replacement sites, according to the central Idaho town's mayor.
Fritz Haemmerle said business interests want a close-by airport and are influencing commissioners into keeping the current airport and potentially expanding it.
Haemmerle said residents of northern Blaine County that includes the tony resort areas of Ketchum and Sun Valley need to have empathy for residents of Hailey and nearby Bellevue who deal with the noise and potential danger of commercial air traffic.
"I'm tired of the county representatives giving lip service to the notion that 11,000 people (in Hailey and Bellevue) matter to you," he told the commissioners at a Friedman Memorial Airport Authority meeting Tuesday, the Idaho Mountain Express reported (http://bit.ly/21qHoqJ).
"Of course, we care about the people," commissioner Jacob Greenberg replied. "If we reject every notion because you think it is expansionist or that we want the airport to stay, we're not going to get any business done."
Expanding residential areas in Hailey and Bellevue and high hills that parallel the airport make the current airfield too dangerous for larger aircraft so in 2013 the Federal Aviation Administration approved allowing the airport to either improve or move. A plan to move it south stalled when expenses soared to more than $300 million, so plans to make the current airport safer moved ahead.
Many of the 16 potential alternative sites have been eliminated for various reasons, including some in sage grouse habitat. In February, U.S. Bureau of Land Management representatives said only one site off U.S. Highway 20 near Fairfield was still considered potentially viable.
"I know what your next stage is," Haemmerle told commissioners. "You want to increase the size of this airport and make it impossible to get any other location."
Commissioners say the current airport's master plan has to be completed in order to get federal funding.
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Information from: Idaho Mountain Express, http://www.mtexpress.com
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