PIERCE COUNTY, Wash. — Washington is planning to bring a new airport to the region to keep up with the increasing number of travelers.
The Commercial Aviation Coordinating Commission put out a report that predicts 27 million more passengers will be arriving and departing from Washington by 2050.
The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) studied two types of possible locations for the airport which are “greenfield locations” or undeveloped land and existing airports. There were 10 greenfield locations it considered across Skagit, Snohomish, King, Pierce, Thurston and Lewis counties.
The three greenfield locations left are east Pierce County, central Pierce County and central Thurston County. There is also a recommendation to add capacity to Paine Field in Everett.
Two of the three locations considered are in Pierce County, which is a concern to County Executive Bruce Dammeier.
In a letter signed by the Pierce County Council, Dammeier told WSDOT that the proposed areas can’t support this kind of project.
“We don’t have any major infrastructure out there,” he said. “We have some two-lane state highways. We don’t have any transit. So, it would require major freeways to go out there, major investment in transit to go out there.”
The Commission’s report said this new airport would need to be able to support 20 million annual passengers. The site may also be heavily relied on for the region’s air cargo. Dammeier said setting up the necessary infrastructure to support an airport of that size would come at the expense of the county’s natural environment.
“There’s harm to our watershed, there’s harm to our salmon, there’s harm to this protected rural character. Something that, by state law, we had real limitations to what we could build out there,” Dammeier said. “In the Pacific Northwest, and in Pierce County, we pride ourselves on our natural beauty. Yet, they’re going to run roughshod over all of our efforts to do that to keep rural Pierce County rural, by landing a major commercial airport there. That doesn’t sound right to me.”
An official decision won’t be announced until next June.
However, Dammeier pointed out that a meeting with WSDOT leadership gave him the impression that a decision may have already been unofficially made and now he questions the process.
He said he was told that building in Thurston and Snohomish counties is already off the table.
“When they start off by saying they couldn’t consider anything in King County, yet, if you look at another analysis and the only proposed site that didn’t have any red negatives was a site in King County, but they can’t consider that? It didn’t feel valid to me," he said. "So if this is a political process, then the political leadership in Pierce County need to step up and fight the fight.”