Aviation board to revisit airport listing

After voting unanimously on March 7 to add Sisters Eagle Airport to Oregon's list of airports of state concern, the Oregon Department of Aviation decided to unwind that action last week after written testimony was left out of the record.

"We got a whole bunch of emails and somehow we left about 31 of them out of the packet and the staff report that the board voted on (on March 7)," ODA director Mitch Swecker told The Nugget. "We're adding them (the emails) to make it fair to everybody."

The board will revisit the issue again at its April 20 meeting in McMinnville. The omitted emails and the ODA staff report are available for review on the ODA website.

The procedural glitch is the latest development in what has become a tangled knot of issues surrounding the operations of Sisters Eagle Airport. The airport under the ownership of Julie and Benny Benson has made significant grant-funded improvements to its runway, added a fuel depot and has hosted increased aviation activity, including a highly regarded student aviation program affiliated with Sisters High School, and a controversial skydiving operation.

The listing in Appendix M as a privately owned, public-use airport of State concern would have little direct impact on the operations of the airport.

"It continues the uses that are currently allowed," Swecker said. "It enables them in statute."

While the airport has seen an increase in traffic and instruction activities, the issue that has raised the greatest concern in the community is the skydiving operation, which is expected to return to action this summer. Some local residents - both in the vicinity of the airport and further out - contend that the aircraft's takeoff pattern and particularly the droning noise of its circling to gain drop altitude is negatively impacting their quality of life.

"Skydiving is the issue," Bruce Mason told The Nugget.

Mason is a member of the steering committee of the local activist group Save Our Skies (SOS).

SOS representatives noted that they are splitting the cost of a facilitator with the airport owners to explore mitigation of the impacts of aircraft noise. Facilitator Anne George is currently assessing the potential for a mitigation agreement.

Both sides have expressed a willingness to "come to the table" - and both sides have said that they've met resistance from the other side.

Julie Benson told The Nugget last week that "SOS is not willing to mitigate (noise impact) - they just want it to stop," Benson said.

SOS members say that is not true. Asked what would constitute mitigation from their point of view, Mason, Karen Hulbert and Susan Springer agreed that a change of takeoff and climbing pattern, changes or reductions in hours and/or days of operation and mechanical modifications to the skydiving aircraft would all be considered forms of mitigation worth considering.

"It would be a substantial noise reduction," Mason said. "We've been saying that all along and have offered suggestions for that... If they did that, 95 percent of the complaints would go away."

Asked last week about mechanical adaptations that could make a difference with propeller noise on the skydiving aircraft - such as installing a three-bladed propeller or adding a muffler - Benson told The Nugget, "Absolutely, I believe there are some mechanical modifications that would help that plane. They're expensive. Who's going to pay for that? That's absolutely something that we could bring to the table - if we can get to the table."

Mason suggests that the use of a more powerful plane that could climb more quickly and quietly would be beneficial.

The skydiving operation does not currently have use of the drop zones where parachutists landed last summer. To use the properties where they landed - one alongside Camp Polk Road inside the city limits and one on a hayfield on private property under county jurisdiction - the operation would have to obtain a conditional-use permit, which would require a land-use process including public hearings. The timeline for obtaining permits by the start of the season would be extremely tight and given the likelihood of appeals, probably not

viable.

Without the permits, the skydivers' landing zone would have to be on the airport property.

In addition to the noise- impact controversy, there is an issue regarding a paved "runout" on the airport runway. Senior Deschutes County Planner Peter Russell noted in a memorandum last fall that the paving of the runout in 2015 poses several "challenges" for the County - the first being that it was reportedly done without permits. Additionally, the use is not allowed in the Rural Residential (RR-10) zone and it sits on property not owned by the airport but on the common area owned by the adjacent Eagle Air Estates subdivision.

Also, the runout was reportedly built on lands mapped as wetlands.

The Department of State Lands has not yet made a determination on the wetlands question or any action that might arise from it, and the Eagle Air Estates homeowners association and the airport owners are currently involved in mediation to resolve the issue of the runout intrusion onto the HOA common area.