Planes vs. pines: Sky Harbor, enviornment can coexist
August 26, 2010 at 7:00 pm in Duluth News Tribune
The Sky Harbor Airport has been in operation since 1939 and is a unique part of the city of Duluth’s history. Much of Duluth’s early aviation history occurred at the site, between 1910 and 1948. The airport is also a U.S. Customs point of entry into our community. Local customs officials cleared
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It’s a crime that so much money had to be spent on studies. Cut the trees down. Unless the CAVE people on the point want to have body parts splattered on their manicured lawns, cut them down and plant new ones elsewhere, then get over it.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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You’re kidding me, right? Seeing an overhead photo helps clear things up, I think. Are they talking about drawing a straight line parallel to the runway as seen in this photo and cutting down the few trees that obstruct an airplane approaching from this angle? Really? There’s got to be more to it than that. Otherwise this has all been one big obscene waste of time and resources.
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Good pint Mike. Blame OUR Rulers in Washington. The edict comes down from ON HIGH – Cut down trees or spend $75 million. Hey Oberstar, have you noticed your boys are causing us a little problem here? How about a little, you know, help.
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Send some from the U down with a tree corer. If they find any trees older than 100 years I’ll eat a pine cone.
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I’m a little confused by the format of this article. I see that John Eagleton is the chair of the airport authority board but it implies at the top of the article that he is a reporter for the news tribune. Is it both? Is this a news article or a statement printed word for word from the airport authority?
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How about this, Change nothing except the direction the planes take off and come in. Make them take off to the north and land from the North. Problem solved.
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Aviation 101: Airplanes takeoff and land into the wind-to do otherwise is a risk to pilot and passengers. Only in Duluth would this much money be spent defending trees vs. people (and their safety).
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Having been a 50 year resident of Park Point, I need to let Kevinm know that the prevailing winds on the Point for, oh, 90% of the time are either northeast or southwest. That means most of the time planes are landing in a crosswind. All one has to do is stand at the Rec Center end of Sky Harbor and watch the planes “crab” either right or left as they take off or land. My solution: keep exactly as it has been for the last 60 years…….do nothing; and let the trees live (along with the birds,insects, animals, and most of all, people and their love of the Pine Forest). Where was all the griping and safety issues 30 years ago?
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I’ve got to believe the forest could be trimmed (along the flightpath extension of the runway), without removal of the entire forest. Is their no possible compromise ? It appears that the trees are an issue now because have achieved a height where they are a danger to aircraft taking off in one direction.
Sorry, I choose people over trees-and why are these pine trees more coveted than others? Because they are on Park Point?
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The article points out that $793,000 of the study was paid for by the FAA with the airport authority chipping in $40,000. The implication is that it only cost “us” the $40k. I hate to break it to you but “us” is also the FAA. Whichever agency paid for it, it comes from taxpayer dollars. Whichever agency paid for it, it was an incredibly irresponsible and wasteful expenditure. That money should have gone towards a solution to the problem, not some three inch thick “study”. Yes, planning needs to be done but some common sense applied early in the process would have helped.
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Fire up those chain saws and then TIMBER.
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So, almost $1 million spent studying trees. Guess what – if we leave the trees alone and re-align the runway so as to avoid the trees we now have to have multiple studies. Fill will have to be hauled (a lot) to create the land area necessary for runway and taxiway surfaces. That means water studies, shipping traffic studies, Park Point dune impact studies and many more. This will all probably take at least 5 years and who knows how many millions of $$. In the meantime, the existing trees continue to grow taller, slowly choking off the air traffic (translate revenue) to this beautiful and historic area.
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Well yeah, but…um…um…the trees! My god, the trees!
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