Warsaw Board of Aviation Commissioners President Dan Robinson, right, listens while Warsaw Municipal Airport Manager Nick King, left, gives an explanation on a board agenda item at Tuesday’s meeting. Photo by David Slone, Times-Union.

By David Slone
Times-Union

WARSAW — It was all updates and no action — save approving minutes and claims — at Tuesday’s, July 8,  Warsaw Board of Aviation Commissioners meeting.

The first update came from Warsaw Municipal Airport Manager Nick King during the discussions of June claims. One claim was from Stantec Consulting Services for $25,148.77.

“That’s just continued, ongoing monitoring of that fuel release with IDEM. Good news is, we are optimistic that we are finished with the initial site characterization. We actually believe we were able to remove all the fuel that was spilled. We’re not seeing any more in any of our testing, so the plan we had together worked by going in and actually digging out the soil that didn’t make it down to the groundwater,” he explained.

The Indiana Department of Environmental Management was notified on June 14, 2024, of released regulated substances at an underground storage tank site at and by the airport. King continued Tuesday, “Once the ISC is complete, we can move on to our full remediation, which is basically going to mean the wells that we have installed to make sure that no fuel did make it to the groundwater will stay in place for so many months, so many years, whatever IDEM says, and we’re going to pull random samplings to make sure that there isn’t more fuel.”

He said they haven’t seen fuel in eight to 10 months, “which means what we did worked. We just have to continue on to make sure that there’s not something residual that we missed.”

Board President Dan Robinson asked, “How long are they going to make us pay for this?”

King said luckily the airport wasn’t paying for it. “As part of this contract — that’s what this contract was, you guys approved it a couple months ago — and we just started down the reimbursement process and we should be getting all but about $10,000 or $12,000 of everything that we’ve paid so far for this project back from that ELTF (Excess Liability Trust Fund) that we pay into.”

Board member Gene Zale asked if that was a state fund, and King said yes. King said he doesn’t have those numbers yet and was waiting to hear from IDEM, but everything the airport needed to submit, it has. The board unanimously approved all claims.

CHA Consulting Aviation Project Manager Mary Kerstein provided a list of quick updates to the Board.

On the runway 27 obstruction mitigation (power line lowering) project, she said CHA submitted all the invoices and grant closeout paperwork to the FAA on the approximate $7.6 million project back on June 30. The FAA does have a review period for that.

On the runway 9-27 safety area improvement, for the program definition, she stated, “We have incorporated the final comments, and we’re just doing one final, internal review, and then we’ll be submitting that to the FAA by the end of July.”

She said that while CHA didn’t have any invoices for the Board to approve this month, there will be some at the Aug. 12 meeting.

Moving on to the taxiway E-1 rehabilitation/reconstruction project, Kerstein said they did get with Phend & Brown about the low spot on the taxiway that was discussed at the June meeting. Phend & Brown will be getting some survey shots out there and propose a repair method for CHA and the airport to review. King told the board members if they get a chance to go out and see the taxiway — right in front of the Dells subdivision — they will get to see how good it looks.

The striping was completed last week and “it looks really, really good,” he said. There’s the one spot they’re going to work on with Phend & Brown, but the rest of the taxiway will serve the airport “for a long time to come,” King said. “We’re very, very happy with it.”

Robinson asked where the low spot was, and King said, “that was right next to the joint off the main taxi lane where it branches off to the east in front of Image Air right there.” He said it’s holding water.

For the taxiway B rehabilitation, Kerstein said the grant application for construction phase services was sent to the FAA on June 26. She said they received some questions Tuesday from the FAA and have already responded to those. “We’ll see. Normally, with discretionary funds, it may not be until September that we get a grant in place for that. We will let you know once we have more information,” she stated.

On the Airport Overlay District the airport, CHA, city and county have been working on for months, Kerstein, “We revised the AOD per the comments from the city and the county, and the revisions to the AOD to meet their requirements. Then next we will work with the city and county zoning boards to get their approval for it.”

An AOD is a set of controls designed to increase the safety associated with aircraft around an airport and to ensure compliance with federal regulations. The AOD promotes compatible land use to protect approaches, airspace and physical surroundings to encourage development that is compatible with the safe operations of aircraft.

King said City Planner Justin Taylor and city attorney Scott Reust have asked that an aviation-specific attorney go over the AOD and make sure it fits within what the airport needs to protect, but also fits within the city’s current zoning and ordinance structure. He said they’ve reached out to Logansport attorney Don Tribbett, who they used on the Airport Authority and is one of the few aviation-specific attorneys in the state. Tribbett agreed to review the AOD, and the Warsaw Planning Department agreed to cover the attorney costs.

Tribbett is working on the AOD right now, King said, and then will come up and meet with the city and county planning directors, Reust, King and CHA to go over the documents. The Board of Aviation Commissioners will get first approval on the AOD, followed by the city zoning board, county zoning board with the city and county councils giving final approvals. King said he hoped to get it across the finish line by the end of this year.

Next up, on runway 9-27 rehabilitation, Kerstein said CHA is working with Phend & Brown to set up a pre-construction meeting, which may be this or next week. Right now, the notice to proceed is scheduled for July 21, but that will be discussed further at the pre-construction meeting. Substantial completion is anticipated to be toward the end of August, depending on when the project gets started.

Finally, on the taxiway A basis of design, Kerstein said they submitted a grant application to the FAA on June 11 but have not heard anything back from them as of Tuesday. “If you remember, we’re using some of the expiring IIJA (Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act) for this project, so we could receive those funds sooner than September, when we normally see more of the discretionary dollars get released, but we’ll see it maybe August. We’ll see how much earlier it is, but, hopefully, it’s a bit earlier than that,” she concluded.