OSU airport repair on hold until FAA report

The submission of the second draft of the Environmental Assessment for the Ohio State Airport at Don Scott Field has been pushed back from Feb. 1, to an unscheduled later date.

The Environmental Assessment is a draft that explains how changes to the airport will affect the environment.

"The second draft of the Environmental Assessment won't be submitted to the Federal Aviation Administration until mid-March at the earliest," said William "Bud" Baeslack III, dean of the College of Engineering.

According to an Oct. 23, 2003, article in The Lantern, OSU plans on repairing two of the runways at the airport and expand the north runway from 3,000 to 6,000 feet.

The project is on hold until OSU completes an environmental assessment of the situation.

"The reason the submission of the second draft has been pushed back is because we still have more technical questions that need to be addressed by people outside of the university community," Baeslack said. "It is taking a little longer to gather all of the information we need."

Since the submission of the second draft has been pushed back, so has everything else, Baeslack said.

"Once the second draft is submitted to the FAA, the FAA will comment on it and then a final draft will be written up for the public to see," Baeslack said. "After that, there will be a 30-day comment period where there will be a public hearing and an open forum."

The comment period was originally scheduled to be from April 1 to May 2, but is now expected to be pushed back about one-and-a-half months, Baeslack said.

"Our goal is for us to be as accurate as possible which is why it is taking a while," Baeslack said. "We are not going to rush things and we will make sure that we get a complete assessment of the airport."

Baeslack added that the community will be made well aware when the second draft is completed prior to submission to the FAA.