Jonesboro airport site disputed

JONESBORO – About 20 residents are ready to lock horns with local, state and federal decision-makers if they have to, because they don’t want the proposed Downeast Regional Airport getting built in their backyards.

The residents have been meeting steadily since last month, when airport planners and consultants gave details at a meeting in Machias about the plan to site the $23 million airport along U.S. Route 1 in Jonesboro.

It’s the only viable site, they told the 20 Jonesboro residents and others who attended the meeting, because the next best alternative – also in Jonesboro, but along Route 1A – falls on property that the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife does not want to sell.

The Jonesboro group had planned to hold a public meeting to provide information about the airport on Aug. 3. When airport supporters and planners learned of the meeting, they called an informational meeting of their own for Tuesday, Aug. 8, and plans for the Aug. 3 meeting were rescinded.

None of the Jonesboro group wanted to speak on the record about airport issues on Wednesday.

They will be meeting informally among themselves this evening, and some of them are expected to attend the Washington County commissioners’ regular monthly meeting at 4 p.m. today in Machias. There, Eddie DuGay – Machias’ interim town manager and the interim director of the Machias Airport – will update the commissioners about the Aug. 8 meeting plans.

The Aug. 8 meeting – sponsored by the town of Machias and the Washington County Council of Governments – will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Jonesboro Elementary School cafeteria. The school is located on U.S. Route 1 across from ZacRy’s Store.

“This will be the third informational meeting about this fairgrounds site, and all three meetings are identical,” DuGay said Wednesday. “We are holding it because of concerns of some people in the region who have voiced their opposition.

“This should alleviate some misinformation that is being disseminated.”

A site-selection process lasted two years before planners zeroed in on what they call the “fairgrounds site,” although the airport is expected to be built just southwest of the Downeast Fairgrounds on Route 1.

The relocated regional airport would replace the existing Machias facility, and its new 5,000-foot runway would accommodate both business and corporate general aircraft.

The federally mandated environmental assessment on the fairgrounds site is near completion and will be released in mid-August.

A formal public hearing on that document will be held in September after the required 30-day comment period. The public hearing is also slated for the Jonesboro school, and a date will be set once the environmental assessment is officially released.

The Jonesboro group of 20 isn’t necessarily against the construction and relocation of an airport for Washington County, but they feel that “the people” were left out of the process of selecting the best site.

At the June meeting, residents voiced preferences for redeveloping the airport strips in either Princeton or Deblois.

But pilots, planners and consultants all point to pent-up business needs for an improved airport facility near Machias coming out of the University of Maine at Machias, the Down East Community Hospital and local emerging businesses.

Norman Ross, a Jonesboro pilot, favors the selection of the fairgrounds site.

“An unlikely service that might find its way to our new regional airport would be overseas flights, small aircraft of U.S. manufacture going overseas or European planes being sold here in this country,” Ross wrote in a letter to the Bangor Daily News.

“There is a surprising volume of that kind of traffic that passes through Bangor. Jonesboro would have the closest all-weather airport to Europe.”

One of the presenters Tuesday will be Christine Therrien, the Machias town manager and airport director until last May. In June she became the town manager of Madawaska. A local pilot is flying to Madawaska to bring her to the meeting in Jonesboro.

On Friday, DuGay will be flown over the fairgrounds site to see firsthand why the group of Jonesboro residents has trouble with the likely flight paths over their homes. Two of Jonesboro’s three selectmen already have toured the proposed site by air.

Judy East, the council of government’s executive director, will moderate Tuesday’s meeting.

For more information on Tuesday’s meeting, contact Eddie DuGay (598-8200) or Judy East (454-0465).