Moving Runway Fill Not So Simple

One of the many difficult problem for the Port in moving forward on the third-runway project is finding millions of cubic yards of fill material that will be clean enough to meet the requirements laid down by the Department of Ecology, the PCHB, and the Supreme Court. Once found, the fill must be moved to Sea-Tac Airport, and that turns out to be not so simple, either.

Despite the Port's protests, the Supreme Court upheld a factual findings by the PCHB that fill material must be completely free of petroleum by-products - such as gasoline, Diesel fuel, oils, grease, & so on. This rules out a great amount of fill that might come from various sites, especially environmental clean-up sites. Also, the Court said, the fill must not come from sites known to be contaminated. That rules out many more sites.

After legal fill materials are found, they need to be moved to the site. The usual truck-trailer dump-truck combinations can haul up to 22 cubic yards per trip (up to 33 tons). Loads of this size are pushing it, especially when one needs to prevent spillage. RCAA estimates the actual average load at closer to 18 cubic yards (27 tons).

Imagine 22 Million Tons of Fill Moving by Truck

The Port now hopes to complete the runway project in 2007 or 2008. This means that the Port needs about 15 million additional cubic yards (or 22 million tons) of fill over the next four to five years. However one runs the numbers, the result is hundreds upon hundreds of truck trips per day. In just the next two years, the Port hopes to move in six million cubic yards of fill, in a period of 654 working da