Boston Globe -- NorthWest section
Thursday, September 22, 2005

Hanscom runway plan airs Monday

By Davis Bushnell, Globe Correspondent

The latest issue surfacing at Hanscom Field is a runway improvement plan
that has the Massachusetts Port Authority, owner-operator of the Bedford
airport, and its opponents at loggerheads over the proposal's intent.

Massport says the upgrading of the grassy ends of runway 5/23 on the Bedford
and Concord sides of the airfield is required by the Federal Aviation
Administration for safety purposes. These so-called runway safety areas need
to be graded and leveled to ''reduce the risk of damage to aircraft in an
emergency and to provide access for rescue vehicles," according to Massport
spokesman Richard Walsh.

Opponents of any expanded activity at the airport maintain that Massport is
preparing the way for larger planes, notably jets, to use the
5,000-foot-long runway. The agency denies this assertion.

The issue is likely to reach a boiling point Monday afternoon, when state
environmental officials will hold a public meeting on the runway proposal.
The meeting will get underway at 5 p.m. in the terminal building at Hanscom
Field. The public comment period for the proposal ends on Oct. 14.

Massport is hopeful, Walsh said, that work on the runway can begin in the
summer of 2007 and be completed in three or four months. The total cost will
be $1.35 million, he said.

Meanwhile, opponents are revving up their concerns.

''The real concern is that improvements to [runway] 5/23 will enable
increased use of the runway by large aircraft," said Anne Shapiro, a Concord
selectwoman and chairwoman of the Hanscom Field Advisory Commission.

Also, Shapiro said, the runway is near a site where a Woburn company,
Crosspoint Aviation Services LLC, wants to build a large facility. The
company, which was selected by Massport in June, has said it wants to open
the complex in the spring of 2007, providing aircraft maintenance, fuel
sales, and other services. These are similar to those now being offered at
the airfield by Signature Flight Support and Jet Aviation.

The runway plans are ''just the latest example of the incremental growth
that Massport has been pursuing for decades," asserted Anna Winter,
executive director of Save Our Heritage, a Concord-based historic
preservation group. ''If we don't vigorously oppose every step that Massport
takes to further expand Hanscom, we are going to wake up to find our
communities completely subordinated to the unrelenting noise and pollution
of incessant jet traffic."

In 2004, there were 33,061 takeoffs and landings of jet aircraft at the
airfield, an 8.9 percent increase over the previous year.

If runway 5/23 were opened to increased traffic, that would be particularly
worrisome to residents of Virginia Road in Concord because of additional
noise and other factors, said Julian Bussgang of Lexington, cochairman of
the environmental subcommittee of the Hanscom Area Towns Selectmen group,
made up of officials from Bedford, Concord, Lexington, and Lincoln, the
communities bordering the airport.

Margareta Lidskog, an airport activist who lives in the Virginia Road area,
also questioned, in an e-mail written last Sunday, whether the intent of
Massport's runway plans is ''to make it easier for more and more large
aircraft to fly in and out of Hanscom [Field]. And what other impacts could
the proposed changes have on the future of our neighborhood?"

Walsh said in a written statement: ''The proposed improvements will not
affect existing runways, normal runway operations, or capacity in any way.
And there will be no increase in pavement." The airfield's major runway,
called 11/29, is 7,000 feet in length.

One official who said he is not overly concerned about plans for runway 5/23
is Sheldon Moll, a Bedford selectman and longtime member of the selectmen
group and the advisory commission.

For one thing, the planned runway improvements ''were covered" in the 2000
environmental status and planning report prepared by Massport, Moll said.
For another, the conservation commissions of the four towns will be brought
into the picture, he said, in terms of wetlands protection. The Bedford side
of the runway has wetlands.

© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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