The Little River Airport Advisory Committee (LRAAC) has been working for several months jointly with the Mendocino County Department of Transportation (DOT) on a presentation which LRAAC hopes to make to the Board of Supervisors’ Public Resources subcommittee in May. LRAAC has 4 non-pilot and 3 pilot members and advises the Board on airport matters. The presentation informs the Board that several projects are stalled and need more staff time from DOT. Some of the projects have been grant funded but implementation has stalled due to DOT budget cuts which have reduced the staff time to implement funded projects (the grant funding doesn’t pay for DOT staff time).
During the months of discussion, DOT came up with a create solution to one of the stalled projects and was able to get CDF crews working on removing hundreds of trees from the approach and transition zones. They’ve made very good progress. This work will have to pause for a few months due to the nesting season for endangered species but will hopefully be completed this fall. We hope that once the tree removal is completed the FAA will proceed to implement that GPS approach procedure we requested in 1998. Safety concerns over the trees have delayed this.
We are hoping the Board of Supervisors will direct DOT to increase the priority of airport projects so that this and other funded projects will move forward and Timely grant applications will be written for projects in the Capital Improvement Plan that have been slipping into the future due to lack of staff time.
Tim Scully
Little River Airport Association
For more information, please go to the Little River Airport Pilots Association web site.
