TagAirport Communities Coalition(279)

The Airport Communities Coalition (ACC) asked a federal court to reconsider its ruling that allowed the Army Corps of Engineers to issue a wetlands fill permit for a Port of Seattle project. ACC argued the court overlooked a December 2001 Washington State Pollution Control Hearings Board order that effectively blocked the required water quality certification within the legally allowed one-year window, which under the Clean Water Act should have prevented the permit from being granted.

A federal court ruled in favor of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Port of Seattle, rejecting a legal challenge by the Airport Communities Coalition — a group of cities near Sea-Tac Airport — over a Clean Water Act permit issued in December 2002 for the airport's Third Runway Project. The permit authorizes filling approximately 50 wetlands with over 23 million cubic yards of material to support construction of a new 8,500-foot runway. The court found the Corps' decision was not arbitrary or capricious under the Administrative Procedures Act's standard of review.

The State of Washington filed a friend-of-the-court brief in a 2003 federal case concerning the Port of Seattle's proposed third runway at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. The case centered on whether the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was required to include all conditions set by the Washington State Department of Ecology in its Clean Water Act Section 404 permit, after a state appeals board added sixteen conditions to the original water quality certification. Washington argued that federal law gives states sole authority to enforce their own water quality standards on federally permitted projects, and that the Corps improperly ignored nine of those sixteen conditions.

This is a library catalog page listing five legal and regulatory documents from 2003 related to environmental permitting and litigation. The documents include an NPDES water discharge permit (No. WA-002465-1) issued by the Department of Energy, and three entries related to a legal case (ACC v. Colonel Graves) involving a Section 404 appeal and motions for summary judgement filed through the Army Corps of Engineers. A comment letter on the NPDES Draft Permit is also catalogued.

A 2003 Washington State legislative memorandum outlines a proposed striking amendment to HB 2276, which would establish Aviation Mitigation Zones (AMZs) around large regional airports like Seattle-Tacoma International Airport to address noise impacts on nearby communities. The amendment would require the Port of Seattle to levy $10 million annually from 2004 to 2007 into a dedicated mitigation fund, with spending restricted to affected areas within the AMZ. An advisory board and competitive grant process would be created to help distribute funds to eligible local governments, schools, and nonprofits in impacted neighborhoods such as Burien, Des Moines, Tukwila, and Normandy Park.

Des Moines Mayor Don Wasson was charged by Washington State's Public Disclosure Commission with concealing $49,000 in illegal campaign contributions from local businessman Hank Hopkins, who stood to profit from a third-runway construction contract at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. The funds allegedly helped elect three pro-runway City Council members in 2001, after which Wasson was named mayor and the council voted to cut the city's $150,000 funding to the anti-runway Airport Communities Coalition. Wasson denied the charges, but investigators confronted him with an endorsed check he had initially claimed not to have received.

This document is a readme guide for a set of CD volumes containing court records from the King County Superior Court case Airport Communities Coalition v. Ecology & Port of Seattle (Case No. 02-2-25658-9SEA), a legal dispute related to Sea-Tac Airport. The CDs include scanned exhibits, indexes, and supporting files organized across 24 boxes, with Word documents containing hyperlinks to the PDF exhibits. Users are instructed to copy all files to a single local folder to ensure the hyperlinks function correctly.