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Maintaining two mutually exclusive
positions on the same point at the same time is something
of a Port specialty.
We call them "two-fers"--two opposing positions for the
price of one.
Is it a wetland or not? Yes & No.
Port watchers were bemused by the Port's claim in its wetlands-permit applications
to the Army Corps of Engineers and Ecology that it should get full credit
for "restoring" 6.6 acres of the Vacca Farm to wetland status.
Why the bemusement? Because in its lawsuit to acquire the property by eminent
domain, the Port stoutly maintained, through its wetlands consultant, Dr.
James Kelley, that the Vacca land was not really a farm, but was a commercially
valueless wetland, subject to frequent flooding. Therefore, the Port shouldn't
have to pay high-end farmland prices. Well, which was it? [For the record,
the lawsuit was Port
of Seattle v. RST Enterprises, King County Superior Court Cause no. 99-2-26788-5; Dr.
Kelley’s testimony appears in the Report of Proceedings at various
places between p. 41 & p. 101).]
More planes? Certainly. Certainly not.
The Port brought 'two-fers' to
a high art form in the Third Runway Environmental Impact
Statements. In one part
of each EIS, the Port asserted (without giving any details)
that the runway would provide huge economic benefits by
increasing the capacity of the Airport. But elsewhere in
each of those same EISes the Port claimed that building
the runway would not bring even one more airplane into
Sea-Tac--in other words, it would produce no capacity
increases at all. No new planes means (the Port said),
no increases in noise, air pollution, &c. to the surrounding
communities--no new mitigation would be needed.
Actually, this is a "three-fer", because the
Port admitted to the Puget Sound Regional Council that
it would need to provide (unspecified) mitigation, & promised
to do so. Can new airplanes arrive with new passengers
when we’re talking about good impacts (economic activity)
but vanish when we’re talking about negative impacts?
Do we have to watch out for
birds? Yes & No.
In meetings on wetlands, the
Port constantly points out that the FAA recommends
not doing
anything that would increase
conflicts between the Airport and waterfowl. And so, the
Port shouldn’t have to do in-basin mitigation of
damages to local wetlands. Of course, building a runway
right in the middle of a large existing wetlands system
at the headwaters of three creeks makes the Port just
about the biggest violator of the FAA policy imaginable.
(Check out the Highline photo album elsewhere in this newsletter
to see just how much open water there is near Sea-Tac.)
Magic fill dirt
And we should
mention the magic fill materials for the third runway embankment,
which
will allow clean water to
percolate down to replenish local streams but which will
at the same time block any water that might be contaminated
by passing through "dirty fill". How does that work?
Voo-doo economics
A specialized Port two-fer is the voo-doo economics
version. For example, the Port can charge the airlines
huge new costs of doing business and call those costs
"savings". Here's how this works. The third
runway, if built, will supposedly save airlines all sorts
of money by shortening
arrival times by a few seconds here, a few minutes there
(sometime in the far future). To pay for the runway, those
same airlines will be charged enormous new landing fees
(starting very soon). Of course the runway is presently
penciled out at six or eight times the cost of any other
similar runway. So the airlines will pay six or eight times
more than a runway should cost upfront, but it's
called a "savings" because they will save
a smaller amount of money later on--maybe. Go figure.
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