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The core of the Port's
current PR campaign on the third runway is to complain
endlessly that other government agencies —and protest
by the neighbors—as
unduly delayed the project. The truth is that this
project has gotten this far only because the Port hasn't
played
by the rules (& others also didn't play by the rules). The alternative-site study by PSRC was
artificially constrained to the four PSRC
counties. And worse, the evaluation of the third runway
alternative was not done on the same basis as other alternatives. The alternative-site study by PSRC was
abruptly terminated just as its
analysis was coming into focus, but before conclusions
had been drawn. The decision on noise-reduction from
the Expert Arbitration Panel was
discarded because it wasn't what was expected. This is the ONLY project we have ever
heard of in any incorporated city of
this State where someone was allowed to build without submitting
the plans
to independent review by the City building department (maybe
the Feds claim
the right to ignore local building departments, but the
Port isn't the Feds). The Port was allowed to withdraw its
second, defective JARPA application,
an application that should simply have been denied. The Engineers allowed the Port to proceed
as if the second application had
NOT been withdrawn but was simply being further studied
by the Engineers. The Port inveigled the Legislature into
passing a special bill to reverse
an adverse factual determination by the PCHB. Ecology
has been lobbied by the Port into
changing the State-wide water quality standards, long i.n
review, to the
Port's particular advantage (by treating holding ponds
differently, & less stringently, than in the past WQS). The
Port keeps getting the rules changed, or ignored, in
order to promote building this project, & to
the disadvantage of the public interest.
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