Yeager Airport's governing board delayed an expected vote Wednesday on choosing a plan to rebuild the Charleston airport's collapsed safety overrun area.
Instead, the board voted to spend $70,000 to extend its contract with its consulting engineering firm, Schnabel Engineering, through the end of January to address concerns about the two-wall rebuild option recommended last month by its construction committee. Schnabel will also further refine and evaluate the two-wall plan and three other replacement options it had previously identified, take a look at other replacement possibilities, and analyze the environmental permitting policies and timelines each option would require.
The recommendation to delay the vote was made by board President Ed Hill, who also serves on the airport's construction committee.
Lacking the money to pay for the rebuilding project, "we have time to look into it a little more thoroughly," Hill told board members. "Without help from FEMA [the Federal Emergency Management Administration] or the governor, we may have to wait for our lawsuits to conclude" before money is available to pay for restoring the safety overrun, Hill said.
One of the reasons the two-wall option was selected by the construction committee was that it involved little, if any, construction activity outside the footprint of the safety overrun area's collapsed engineered fill zone, making an expedited environmental review process likely. Other rebuild options involved the crossing or relocation of Elk Two-Mile Creek at the base of the slope, which construction committee members were told could involve environmental reviews lasting two years or more.
"We want to see of there are more options than we thought we had" for completing environmental reviews in a more timely manner, Hill said.
Hill said he served on the airport board when the decision was made to build the safety overrun atop a 1:1 slope, using an engineered fill system.
"Look where that got us," he said. "I want to make sure we make the right decision when the time comes."
While FEMA initially rejected Yeager's request to reimburse the airport for $72 million in damages caused by the heavy March rainfall that airport officials say triggered the March 12 safety overrun collapse, an appeal will be filed this week detailing the devastation caused by the landslide and subsequent slips.
"We could potentially get 75 percent of $72 million," or FEMA's full emergency grant request minus a state and local match, Terry Sayre, Yeager's executive director, told board members.
A second FEMA grant request of $848,000 to cover the airport's emergency response to the landslide, including temporary housing for Keystone Drive residents, utility relocations, netted Yeager $313,000.
Meanwhile, crews for S&E Clearing and Hydroseeding continue to remove earth and rock from the March 12 landslide from the collapsed safety overrun slope. "They're down to about 140 feet below runway grade and they've started hauling out the debris field" near the toe of the landslide, Sayre said.
Reach Rick Steelhammer at rsteelhammer@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-5169, or follow @rsteehammer on Twitter.