David Schaefer
Seattle Times Staff Reporter
AS PREPARATIONS begin for building a new runway at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, a coalition of cities is spending millions of tax dollars on lawsuits and public relations trying to stop the massive project. The Port of Seattle, meanwhile, will spend millions in public funds to keep it from being blocked.
When Steven Lamphear stood up at a public meeting to question the way the city of Burien was fighting a proposed third runway at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, he found himself immediately under suspicion.
Perhaps, said a Burien City Council member, Lamphear was working for the Port of Seattle.
In South King County, those are fighting words.
Lamphear wrote and called the council member to demand an apology. Hearing nothing, he wrote to the mayor. Still unsatisfied, he filed a claim against the city and finally sued for defamation in small-claims court.
Unable to prove he was actually damaged, Lamphear lost the case, although by then he was campaigning for a Burien council position, which he won last month.
What happened with him, he is the first to admit, shows just how passionately the anti-runway feeling burns in communities near the airport.
“We can’t even talk about the runway in a rational sense,” he said. “It is like discussing God – people think you’re anti-God.”
The third-runway plan has won approval by local planning agencies and its first funding from the federal government. The Port of Seattle says expansion is necessary because the airport’s existing two runways are too close together to be used simultaneously in low-visibility conditions, creating flight delays.
The Port wants to put the new runway 800 yards farther west, which will require hauling millions of tons of fill dirt to what is now a low-lying area of Burien. That work has begun.
Nearby communities protest that construction will inundate their streets with dirt-hauling dump trucks, and that a new runway will inflict airplane noise on thousands more residences than are affected now.
In an era when local officials shudder at cutting services or raising taxes, these South King County cities are doing both to finance their war:
— The city of Normandy Park has committed the equivalent of one-quarter of next year’s budget, $600,000, to the fight. The city has put off building sidewalks and repairing streets and expects to take 10 years to pay off a $2 million line of credit at the bank.
— In nearby Des Moines, the City Council raised its local utility tax to finance its share of fighting the airport expansion. The tax adds an extra 1 percent to the cost of long-distance telephone calls, natural gas and electricity, garbage pickup and cable television.
— In Burien, when residents opposed raising the utility tax, the City Council instead cut $700,000 in city reserves intended for street and park improvements and targeted it for battling the runway.
— And the Highline School District, which includes the three cities, just retained a public-relations firm at a cost of nearly $30,000 a month to organize community meetings and get out the word that the area schools are still suffering from noise from the airport’s last runway project, let alone coping with a new one.
The cities and school district are part of the Airport Cities Coalition (ACC), which is fighting the runway in planning boards and state and federal courts.
The same communities also formed the Regional Committee on Airport Affairs (RCAA), with its own budget and mostly volunteer staff, to argue the anti-runway case in the court of public opinion with community meetings and a newsletter.
Since 1994, the ACC and RCAA have spent more than $5.5 million to fight the runway proposal. They expect to spend $2 million more this year. The cities’ shares of the total ACC budget, through next year, include $2.2 million from Des Moines, about $2 million each from Burien and Normandy Park, $450,000 from Tukwila and $327,000 from Federal Way. Des Moines, Normandy Park and Burien also are contributing $28,000 annually to the RCAA.
Lawsuits so far have cost the cities almost $4 million, most of it going to Cutler and Stanfield, a Washington, D.C., law firm noted for fighting airport expansions. The coalition has spent more than $1 million on lobbying and public relations, with the bulk of the spending split between two firms: the Wiley Brooks Co. of Seattle and Winner, Wagner & Francis of Washington, D.C.
The Port, meanwhile, has spent about $1.2 million in public funds on legal expenses since August 1996 and budgeted a like amount for 1998.
The bulk of the Port’s spending has been with the Seattle firm of Foster Pepper & Shefelman, which has handled state and local litigation. The Port also has retained a Chicago firm, Hopkins & Sutter, which has specialized in airport litigation. One Port staff attorney works almost full time on the airport cases.
The Port has six full-time public-relations staffers working on airport issues, although no one works exclusively on third-runway issues.
Are taxpayers in the anti-runway coalition cities in effect contributing to both sides of this legal and public-relations battle?
Not really, say Port spokesmen. While the Port does collect a share of property taxes in King County, it pays for airport projects, including legal costs, with airport revenues, largely fees charged to airlines.
Five separate legal actions are in progress:
— The Port is suing the city of Des Moines for trying to block airport construction with its zoning codes.
— The cities’ coalition has sued the Puget Sound Regional Council, contending the process that led to the third-runway decision was flawed. The case is to be heard in King County Superior Court beginning Jan. 5.
— The cities are challenging the way the Port developed an environmental-impact statement for the runway project.
— Separately, they are challenging the findings of the environmental-impact statement itself.
— In federal court, the cities have sued the Federal Aviation Administration for approving the Port’s third-runway process.
Linda Strout, Port general counsel, said she expects hearings and appeals of all four state cases to the state Court of Appeals by fall 1998, and rulings by mid-1999. If there are appeals to the state Supreme Court, Strout said, she expects decisions by mid-2000.
Strout said it is more difficult to predict the timing of the federal suit against the FAA, but clearly the legal costs will continue for a while.
The expense won’t deter the local communities, said Normandy Park’s mayor.
“We’re going to stop it,” John Rankin declared. “But regardless of what happens there . . . we are getting a tremendous value for that money. We feel we are going to win. We feel we have the right position. But win, lose or draw, to make the Port accountable, we have to sue them.”
Burien City Manager Fred Stouder said the expense of fighting airport expansion is small compared with the cost to the cities of doing nothing – declining neighborhoods, housing and property values.
“The cities would be totally different if the runway goes in,” Stouder said.
In a rally this fall to bolster local support, Peter Kirsch, a city-coalition attorney, was quoted as telling local residents they are “winning in a big way.”
Actually, the Port has won the legal battles thus far, but opposition has slowed the project by years.
The Port announced its plans for a third runway 10 years ago and said it would be in operation by now. The most recent schedule calls for construction to begin in 1999 and the runway to open in 2005. The actual cost of the runway, now estimated at $552 million, is about one-third of a larger airport-expansion project that also includes road construction, a hotel, a new control tower and garages.
“The project is under way,” said Bob Hennessey, an airport spokesman.
Hennessey said the Port has begun buying houses west of the airport, where the new runway would be built. The first of an anticipated 20 million cubic yards of fill dirt has begun arriving at the airport by barge (coming down the Duwamish River) and truck.
Strout, the Port’s counsel, said work on the project will continue unless opponents find a way to get a court injunction to hold it up.
David Schaefer’s phone message number is 206-464-3141. His e-mail address is: dsch-new@seatimes.com