Council Considers Baton Rouge Airport Improvements

A Metro Council panel signed off Wednesday on applications to secure about $100 million in state and federal grants for construction projects at Baton Rouge Metro Airport.

The full council is slated to take final action next week on the proposed grants, which include the relocation of Blount and Plank roads in order to establish a 1,000-foot buffer required by the Federal Aviation Administration at the northeast end of the main runway. The buffer will also allow room for a new, upgraded lighting system at the end of the runway.

Aviation Director Anthony Marino said the federal government has placed a premium on runway buffers since December 2005, when a Southwest Airlines plane skidded off a runway in Chicago, plowed into an intersection and killed a child.

The grant application package is requesting $8 million for construction of a new segment of Plank Road to the east of the airport. Airport officials are also asking for $4.2 million to straighten Blount and move its intersection with Plank away from the runway.

Several other projects in the grant application package are related to extending the airport's main runway by 600 feet to the southwest.

Extending the runway to 7,500 feet is important because the new American Airlines regional jets need the extra runway while operating at full passenger capacity.

But lengthening the runway has created the need for other projects included in the grant requests.

The grant applications include a request for $8 million to relocate Entergy transmission lines that could interfere with flights once the runway extension is complete.

Other requests include:

$34.6 million to improve taxiways.

$16 million to overlay the southwest end of the main runway, and a related taxiway.

$7.8 million to expand the cargo facility.

$5.3 million for drainage improvements.

$5 million to acquire properties south of Blount for future airport expansion.

$4.5 million to relocate the perimeter road around the expansion.

$2.5 million to overlay the main runway.

The airport's day-to-day operations are funded from fees paid by the airlines, car rental companies and others who do business there.

For construction, the airport has traditionally turned to the FAA and to the state for grants.

"We've already done $228 million in improvements, and we don't have a bond issue, we don't have a property tax, nothing," Marino said.

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