::: COMMUNITY NEWS

“Our goal is to have a compromise between the few pilots who want to fly in here at night, and we want to maintain this for posterity, for our children,” said Terry Schutten, chief executive of Sacramento County.

Negotiations continue as county begins cutting trees near RM Airport

Expanded Saturday, March 3, 2007
Published Friday, March 2, 2007

The county held a media event Friday at parkland next to the runway of Rancho Murieta Airport to mark the cutting down of the first of 200 trees under a court order obtained by the privately owned airport, which wants to restore its night operations.

The county hopes ongoing meetings with Caltrans officials will reduce the number of trees to be felled to 76, sparing 200-year-old native oaks and rare stands of 100-year-old Northern California black walnut trees by trimming them and lighting them at night to address pilot safety issues.

The trees are located on the bank the Cosumnes River and form a riparian environment. The strip of county park land parallels the runway, and the trees are about 150-200 feet from the center of the runway.

The airport and adjoining land once belonged to Rancho Murieta's developers. The county took title to the land along the river in 1979, when the developers swapped it for the Yellow Bridge.

A 2003 preliminary environmental report characterized the trees as part of a riparian forest that provides "valuable nesting and roosting habitat" for many species, including more than half a dozen birds protected by federal or state law -- Swainson's hawk, the barn owl, great egret and others. "The proposed project will remove a substantial portion of mature riparian forest," creating significant impacts to the area's biological resources, according to the report.

“Our goal is to have a compromise between the few pilots who want to fly in here at night, and we want to maintain this for posterity, for our children,” said Terry Schutten, chief executive of Sacramento County. “Our goal is really to come up with a way to serve the best of both worlds."

The county is cutting cottonwood trees first, racing a March 15 deadline to comply with a court order and complete the work during the dormant period of the valley elderberry longhorn beetle, a threatened species that lives in the elderberry bushes in the area. Most of the almost $620,000 cost of the project is earmarked for habitat restoration for the beetle. The costs are the county's responsibility, according to the court decision.

Some county officials said Friday that the trees have been an issue for 20 years, but Rob Leonard, chief operating officer for the Sacramento County Department of Airports, noted, "The trees were here when the airport was built … It's a situation that dates back to that first day of operation."

The 3,800-foot runway was built in 1969 to become the first piece of the Rancho Murieta development.

Leonard said the safety risk posed by the trees' proximity to the runway is "a daytime or a nighttime issue. … But obviously Caltrans has permitted daytime operations here."

According to Caltrans, the airport opened for daylight operations in 1970, and lights and nighttime operations were added in 1976.

In 1997, the county and the airport considered a plan in which the airport would have paid to remove the trees, but it was never carried out.

Caltrans suspended the airport's night operations permit in 2001 because of the safety hazard posed by the trees, and a struggle between the airport and the county parks department over the fate of the trees intensified during a series of hearings before the county Board of Supervisors in 2002 and 2003.

At the hearings, local pilots and airport business operators spoke in support of removing the trees to restore night operations. Airport counsel Arthur J. Negrette told the supervisors a possible sale of the airport hinged on having a 24-hour operation.

The airport is owned by the estate of the late businessman Fred Anderson.

Since Anderson's death in 1997, the estate has been unsuccessful at selling the airport and has offered it to county and state agencies with the goal of keeping it an airport.

Leonard said the county respectfully declined the family's offer after deciding "the demand just wasn't there for it to be financially viable."

The airport cut down 20 trees and trimmed others on its portion of the property next to the runway in 2002.

In 2004, the airport took legal action against the county to have trees on its property removed. California Superior Court ruled in favor of the airport in 2005 and the county lost its appeal of the decision.

In contrast to the heated debate going on in the community over development and its effect on trees and wildlife, the tree-cutting issue at the airport hasn't sparked any protests among Murietans.

County officials report a few people have expressed concern about possible aircraft noise at night.