Anchorage airport should explore new de-icing methods; COMMUNITY VOICES: A guest columnist's view

Here's a dirty little secret about Anchorage's airport: Last winter it released 494,000 gallons of industrial antifreeze into Cook Inlet and Lake Hood. That's 58 tanker trucks full of antifreeze. If I pour a cup of the same antifreeze into my yard, I face a $10,000 fine and a year in jail.

Industrial antifreeze is made mostly of two different chemicals: propylene or ethylene glycol. When either breaks down, its sucks oxygen out of the water. That's a problem if you're a fish. But the really nasty bits are the additives. About 5 percent of the total volume, the additives are a brew of corrosion inhibitors, flame retardants, wetting agents, thickeners and dyes.

Until recently, the exact chemicals were a secret. Manufacturers like Dow Chemical didn't want to say. So they didn't. The U.S. Geological Service, however, has shown some pluck and is reverse-engineering it. So far, they've found it contains:

* Benzotriazole: a carcinogen in mammals.

* Nonylphenol: turns male fish into female fish, even in low concentrations. Also, banned in Europe.

* Tolyltriazole: toxic to fish .

The EPA is aware of the problem. They're issuing new rules in December 2009. The enforcement of those rules, however, will fall on Alaska's Department of Environmental Conservation. If their leadership on other water issues is anything to go by, that enforcement will be like October asparagus -- limp and late.

The airport says they don't need new rules -- they're working on cleaning things up. They even have a plan. By 2014 they hope to divert 85 percent of the antifreeze going into Lake Hood into Cook Inlet instead. That's better, they say, because Cook Inlet's capacity to absorb "toxicity" is "virtually unlimited."

Never mind the fact that de-icing fluid is used in the winter -- the same time of year rivers freeze, greatly reducing the Inlet's "flush capacity."

And the cost of the pumps to push all that pollution around? Fifteen million dollars. Plus $1 million to $2 million a year to operate.

I don't want to fly on an airplane with ice on its wings. I bet you don't either. But this isn't a question of saving the environment versus saving lives. There are better, cheaper ways to deal with this stuff. Centralized deicing pads and more-efficient de-icing trucks could help, but the best solution? Infrared de-icing hangars. Really.

A company called InfraTek has invented a new system -- basically a drive-through car wash for planes that uses heated light. It's already been deployed at JFK and Newark airports. And it works. Continental Airlines has found that its 737s are de-iced, on average, in 6 minutes and 50 seconds compared with the 10 to 15 minutes for older methods. It's also cheaper. Though some anti-icing fluid is still needed to get the planes to the end of the runway, overall fluid use is reduced by 90 percent. (The remaining 10 percent is recycled.) And it's all self-financed -- neither the airlines nor the airport pays a penny for construction. Seems like a no-brainer for Anchorage, right?

Apparently, it is a bit of a brainer. These hangars need to be near runways yet not impede the tower's line of sight. Permits are needed. Space is limited. You can't make 'em out of Jell-o.

So far, airport director Morton V. Plumb Jr. has approved one such hangar. I have a hunch that with enough public pressure he could get the permit and find the space for more (i.e. West Air Park or near taxiways Uniform and Papa). It wouldn't take many. According to InfraTek, two hangars could handle 50 percent of the airport's traffic. Four could take care of almost all of it.

Only there's a hitch: the economics for the last two are trickier. That said, the airport has an incentive to make it happen. Compared with the $15 million cost of pumps and the liability associated with sloshing all that pollution around, they'd be better off just purchasing them. But there are alternatives, like offering the airlines credits for glycol avoidance as Cleveland and Buffalo are considering.

At least around our house, if a visitor stopped by for a few hours and spilled, say, 125 gallons of propylene glycol and corrosion inhibitors on the carpet, we might ask for some help cleaning it up. Especially if we had a few thousand such messy visitors coming through a year.

Alex Sheshunoff is a Community Voices columnist. He is a writer living in Anchorage. His Web site is www.notthesharpesttool.com.