Judges Give La Guardia Fliers The Bird

April 10, 2013
Waste-transfer facility to be built near airport may attract hungry birds.

La Guardia Airport is one step closer to getting a new waste-transfer facility that will attract the type of birds that cause plane crashes, opponents warned yesterday.

"If you have one catastrophic bird strike where people died, people are going to stop coming" to La Guardia, said Ken Paskar, whose nonprofit, Friends of La Guardia Airport, lost a court fight yesterday to halt the nearly $200 million project.

Paskar complains that the North Shore Marine Transfer Station will attract birds looking for food.

The facility is being built in College Point, about 2,200 feet across Flushing Bay from Runway 31.

In 2010, the FAA said in a letter that the facility posed no danger. Paskar's group had asked the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals to possibly overturn that finding.

The judges ruled yesterday that they lacked jurisdiction to rule on the letter, and dismissed the case.

A Canada goose crippled US Airways Flight 1549 on takeoff from La Guardia on Jan. 15, 2009.

Capt. Chesley Sullenberger miraculously crash- landed that plane in the Hudson River without any fatalities.

Sullenberger last night told The Post the appeals court's ruling was "disappointing," and he ripped the proposed location of the facility as "a terrible idea."

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