Mukilteo forms its battle plans for fight over Paine Field

Published 10:58 pm Monday, May 18, 2009

MUKILTEO — Opponents of passenger flights at Paine Field won’t allow those jets in the air without a fight.

The city of Mukilteo has several strategies for opposing plans by Horizon Air of Seattle and Allegiant Air of Las Vegas to fly passengers out of the Snohomish County-run airport.

“We’re working on many fronts,” Mayor Joe Marine said.

The county says a deal could be reached within weeks with Horizon to operate flights to Spokane and Portland, Ore. Allegiant Air says it is still interested in flying passengers to Las Vegas and other West Coast cities from Paine Field.

The plans will first have to run the gantlet of an environmental study, so no flights are expected to take off before 2010 at the earliest.

Mukilteo is gearing up for those environmental studies, which could begin as soon as this summer, Marine said. Issues to be addressed are expected to include noise, air quality and automobile traffic. Other factors could come up as well.

Last year, Mukilteo hired aviation attorney Barbara Lichman of Costa Mesa, Calif., to advise the city on the issue. Lichman learned about airports while living under a flight path of John Wayne Airport in Orange County and dealing with noise control issues there. She used that experience to launch her legal career.

She wouldn’t go into detail about her strategy on Paine Field, but said she and the city plan to hit the ground running.

The airline proposals will have to pass the tests of state and federal environmental laws, Lichman said.

Noise, air quality and traffic are foremost among the ways opponents say flights could hurt surrounding communities. Those who support flights say they would bring economic benefits and convenience and that Paine Field would not have enough flights for the noise or other factors to have much of an effect.

Opponents say only a few flights a day, as are proposed by Horizon and Allegiant, might not create such a negative effect, but these would open the door to more that could.

Greg Tisdel, spokesman for Fly from Everett, a group that supports flights, said his group has no special plans for addressing the environmental study on the airport.

“Not until we see it,” he said.

In 2007, Mukilteo set aside $250,000 to fight any plans for commercial service. The city has about $105,000 left after paying for attorneys and consultants, finance director Scott James said.

The city also recently approved a resolution requesting that Paine Field be exempted from a federal rule requiring airports to accommodate airlines that wish to provide service there.

In particular, any airport that takes federal funds for projects such as runway improvements must make room for any airline requesting it. Mukilteo is asking that Paine Field, as the base of operations for Boeing, be exempted from that rule as an airport of “special national significance.”

“It is different; it is not your normal airport,” Marine said.

The idea was inspired by an exemption granted Centennial Airport in Arapahoe County, Colo., near Denver. That suburban airport resisted commercial service in the 1990s and had its funding pulled by the federal government. In 2003, Congress passed a law exempting airports with more than 300,000 flights per year and located within 25 miles of a major metropolitan airport. Paine Field, with about 135,000 flights per year and located about 35 miles from the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, would not qualify under this exemption.

So far, Mukilteo has sent its request only to the state, Marine said, but he plans to take it to the federal level.

To get the exemption approved, “It would literally take an act of Congress,” he said.

The third part of Mukilteo’s strategy is to bring local business and government leaders to the table to discuss ways to attract more high-tech development to Paine Field, Marine said.

Opponents believe increasing the number of aviation-related jobs around the airport could dilute the argument that commercial flights are needed for economic development.

Whether that would work is unknown, Marine said, but either way, he thinks no one will oppose high-tech jobs around Paine Field.

“It gives us what I think is the proper use of that airport,” he said.

Bill Sheets: 425-339-3439, sheets@heraldnet.com.