Easels, easels everywhere and not one with a rendering of the proposed Ivanpah Valley Airport. So many easels, in fact, that television reporters conducted interviews in easel-free zones inside the Clark County Government Center cafeteria. So many easels that, initially, they outnumbered the county aviation and Federal Aviation Administration officials who fronted them during last Wednesday's open house for the $4 billon county-funded project.
If anything, the easels might have been more helpful than the talking heads who filled the narrow byway between them and the dining commons. One placard broke down the entire Ivanpah airport approval-planning-designing-building process, time lines and all: environmental impact study (2005-2010); utility and drainage design (2007-2010); federal approval or disapproval (2010); utility and drainage construction (2010-2012); designing the airport (2011-2015); building the damn thing (2013-2017). On another easel: 28 environmental categories that will be analyzed over the next five years—air quality, flood plans and ground transportation, to name three.
Ivanpah is slated for 6,500 acres on the east side of Interstate 15, about 45 minutes southwest of Downtown Las Vegas. Initial plans call for two or three runways, a 14-gate terminal and annual capacity of 5 million travelers, that number eventually climbing to 35 million at full build-out. Basically, McCarran Lite.
County Aviation Director Randall Walker says the added capacity would relieve pressure on McCarran, the nation's sixth-busiest airport. With McCarran expected to hit its 53-million passenger capacity as early as 2010—it saw 41.5 million travelers last year—Walker says we need Ivanpah the way Scooter Libby needs an alibi. Badly.
In front of one easel, McCarran Planning Manager Dennis Mewshaw chatted amiably with a fellow who worried about Ivanpah's potential impact ... on hang gliders and skydivers? The man said this is an important tourist segment.
Other visitors bent aviation officials' ears with more mundane concerns about flight paths (collisions between inbound McCarran flights and outgoing Ivanpah craft would be bad), traffic (if not careful, the Vegas-to-Ivanpah trip could be like the Strip on a Saturday night—basically, a parking lot) and the impact on growth (will land barons turn the surrounding mountains into heavily populated molehills?). One graybeard wondered where the water was going to come from. Another man had a different worry altogether: What will it look like? (No easel could answer him.)
Build something this big, this audacious, said Mewshaw, and you're gonna raise eyebrows. Another huge airport equals more tourists. Which could mean more migrants, which could mean more traffic, more tract homes. Before you know it, we're Los Angeles.
"We received negative comments back in '97, '98, when legislation was going through Congress to get the land for the airport. People were worried that this would facilitate more sprawl," said Mewshaw, noting that Ivanpah could have an economic impact similar to McCarran, which employs nearly 13,000. "McCarran brings in 50 percent of our visitors. The airport (McCarran) is what sustains growth and our tourism industry, which supports our economic infrastructure. With Ivanpah, we are going to be able to continue to market ourselves to the world."
Back to the easels: One couple stood in front of a placard outlining the opportunities for public participation: plentiful. There'll be public comment sessions through next year, followed by newsletters, Internet updates and hearings through 2010. Wearing what looked like a week's worth of stubble, Joseph Edward dipped from easel to easel, observing. He thinks the project is great. (Disclosure: Edward is affiliated with a company with an appending project.)
"You're not going to stop growth," he says. "Las Vegas isn't like other cities. We have an industry that is not going to go away (tourism). Look at Palmdale, California. As soon as the aviation industry went away, the town went away. That's not going to happen here. Overloading an airport (McCarran) isn't going to stop growth."
Partisan!
Walker says he'd prefer one major airport, but McCarran is landlocked, having tripled in size in 25 years. "We'd much rather have one airport. There's no great advantage to having two airports."
Not totally true. There are municipal bragging rights. Donn Walker, the FAA's western regional spokesman, says Vegas would join New York City, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, among other cities, with twin airports in the same locale. "You can put all of your passengers at one airport, like in Phoenix, which has the fifth-busiest in the country," he says, "or you can divide it into smaller airports. The county is choosing to build a second major airport."
Partisan!
Mike Wellinghurst is partisan, too. He works for McCarran, but thinks the Ivanpah airport plan has multiple problems, none of which are easel-y addressed: Why build an airport on a dry lake bed? Why not move the airport to the opposite side of I-15? Aren't there pollution issues in the Ivanpah valley? Will the nearby Mojave National Preserve be protected? What about the impact of the drought? What's the plan for roads?
Maybe the FAA has found a consultant.
"Airports are essentially small cities and all of the EIS (environmental impact studies on other airports) I've seen address these issues," he says.
Mewshaw admits that he can't answer a lot of questions: "We haven't got that far yet. The environmental impact study will hopefully provide answers."