To land a second airport, WA’s case must be ironclad

The arduous effort to find a second international airport in Puget Sound is flying in circles. The Legislature created a new work group to look closely at the expansion of existing airports — an examination that was already completed by a previous state commission.

“We cannot do this with existing airports,” said Warren Hendrickson, a retired Delta Air Lines pilot and longtime aviator who served as the chair of the Commercial Aviation Coordinating Commission, established in 2019.

Yet that’s exactly the starting point for the new Commercial Aviation Work Group. The expanded panel has no hard deadlines, and no mandate to recommend a new airport location. Gov. Jay Inslee vetoed several sections of a bipartisan plan for that new work group, developed by state Reps. Jake Fey, D-Tacoma, and Tom Dent, R-Moses Lake.

“We’re back to doing something we’ve already done,” echoed Dent, a longtime pilot.

To be clear, this isn’t easy work. The stakes are astonishingly high. Without future expansion, the current capacity will fall short of the 27 million trips — called enplanements — needed each year by 2050, according to a Puget Sound Regional Council 2021 study. The review maintained that, if the region could meet that demand, another $31 billion would be added to Washington’s economy, as well as more than 200,000 jobs.

But the previous commission, tasked to find the ultimate site, found zero partners — not one county, city, port, tribe or other entity — interested in expanding nor building a new airport near Puget Sound population centers. And then came opposition from residents who feared living next to an airport, or that their homes would be destroyed by the creation of one.

“A big goose egg at every level,” Hendrickson conceded. Also plaguing the effort were mandates that limited the scope of study. For instance, King County was off-limits.

Only Yakima seemed to want an airport for Western Washington, which is across the Cascade Mountains from where the airport capacity needs to be. There’s simply no reasonable way to get people across the state, even if Yakima is willing to play host, Dent and others say.

But Gov. Inslee and state lawmakers need to equip appropriately a planning body to adequately study such a delicate matter. Each site candidate, whether in an existing airport or “greenfield,” should be weighed for its pros and cons. And communities should be able to voice their concerns on all.

Only when we have a serious plan to survey Washington and engage residents more fully will a candidate — or two — emerge.

Ultimately, Hendrickson believes the hard work will come down to leadership.

“What everyone is wrestling with is ‘where will the airport go?’” Hendrickson said. “I think the question we should look at is ‘who.’ Who will be the leader to make this happen?”

That now is a pressing issue for the state’s next governor, who will be elected next year. The decision is stark: Find a site or sites that may be unpopular locally but will handle the Puget Sound’s growth surge; or choose to forgo expansion and thus make the entire region suffer. The clock is ticking.