Group wants airport to fund park growth
The Nature Conservancy suggests new fee to help Grand Teton buy land.
By Cory Hatch, Jackson Hole, Wyo.
June 17, 2009
A national conservation group says the Jackson Hole Airport has operated in violation of federal law for 25 years by not compensating the Park Service for its 533-acre footprint and has proposed a funding mechanism to set things right.
The news comes as other groups have asked that the National Park Service not go forward with a draft environmental impact statement, which would allow the airport to continue operating in the park through 2053, until 60 days after the completion of a safety audit due out next spring.
In a June 10 letter, Paul Hansen, Greater Yellowstone program director for The Nature Conservancy, proposes the airport charge an extra $5 per ticket to help Grand Teton National Park to purchase roughly 900 acres of private inholdings worth an estimated $80 million. Hansen said the fund, which could accumulate $3 million per year, likely would satisfy the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act.
Hansen said the original agreement, signed in 1983 by then Interior Secretary James Watt, violates the portion of NEPA that requires off-site mitigation.
“NEPA is pretty unambiguous about off-site mitigation,” he said. “Twenty five years without any off-site mitigation, I’ve never heard of such a thing. It should be at least an acre for an acre.”
“One hundred and twenty eight acres are under pavement, that’s really a total loss to the park,” Hansen said, and the rest of the 533 acres is unavailable to ungulates and many other species. “I would think that an acre for an acre would be the minimum that you’d want to do.”
Hansen said the park has missed opportunities in the past to purchase inholdings because funding wasn’t available.
“There are other opportunities and they’re coming and going every day,” he said.
Hansen said the mitigation fund should be included in the upcoming environmental impact statement.
“This really should be done in front of the lease extension agreement,” he said. “This is something that should have been done 25 years ago.”
Grand Teton spokeswoman Jackie Skaggs said the idea was interesting, but expressed doubts.
“I’m not even sure how that would work, [or] what the legalities of that would be,” she said. “It would have to be voluntary. I don’t know if you could require passengers coming in and out of the airport to pay an assessment.”
Airport Director Ray Bishop said he needs to take a closer look at the proposal, and thought the plan might require legislation.
“They seem to be some fairly reasonable ideas that might be beneficial,” he said.
Hansen’s proposal came on the same day Wyoming Rep. Pete Jorgensen, D-Jackson, sent a letter to the Park Service reiterating calls for the airport to wait until after the safety audit for the environmental impact statement. In a letter Thursday, Gov. Dave Freudenthal expressed support of the lease extension.
