Conscious Choice: Peotone — The Airport the Airlines Don't Want

August 1999 | News of the Earth

Peotone — The Airport the Airlines Don't Want

by Dave Aftandilian

If you’ve been reading about the new governor’s plans, you already know that a third airport in Peotone is high on his list of priorities. According to supporters of the proposed Peotone airport, O’Hare and Midway have reached their capacity limits and will not be able to fulfill the increased demand for air travel in the next century. "As capacity constraints continue to grow, O’Hare continues to lose direct service to more and more cities.... It is expected that O’Hare travelers will lose access to more than forty cities over the next twenty years if a new airport is not built. This, in turn, will drive up ticket prices for passengers who wish to travel to one of those cities," says U.S. Congressman Jerry Weller (R-IL) of the 11th District. Weller’s district, it so happens, encompasses much of Will County, including Monee, New Lenox, and Peotone.

Furthermore, a third airport in Peotone "will promote regional economic development and give corporate executives greater access to air travel, thus minimizing the need to leave the city," according to a press release from Keep Chicago & Illinois Flying (whose web site, interestingly enough, lists its contact information on the home page as the South Suburban Airport Project Office of the Illinois Department of Transportation).

According to Peotone airport supporters, the reason not one major airline — nor the Federal Aviation Administration, for that matter — has supported the proposed airport is that the big airlines are afraid of competition.

Just who are these Peotone supporters? Mainly, businesspeople who stand to make millions from development associated with the proposed airport — and politicians who depend on the support of these businesspeople. Keep Chicago and Illinois Flying, for instance, which hired former U.S. Senator and former Illinois Secretary of State Alan J. Dixon this past January to lobby for the Peotone airport, is a coalition of business groups led by the Chicago Southland Chamber of Commerce and the South Suburban Mayors and Managers Association. Dixon previously helped push through a project now known as the MidAmerica Airport near his hometown of Belleville, Illinois; so far, not one commercial airline has agreed to fly there.

Politicians supporting the proposed airport include U.S. Congressmen Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL) and Henry Hyde (R-IL), as well as Governor George Ryan, who made a campaign promise to push for a third airport, and who has allocated $75 million in his Illinois FIRST infrastructure program for land acquisition and planning for the Peotone airport. Congressman Jerry Weller has "included the construction of a third airport as a vital component of [his] south suburban revitalization Strategy," according to the press release on his web site.

Who’s against it? The CEOs of sixteen major airlines including United, for starters. They sent a letter to former Governor Jim Edgar expressing their opposition to a third Chicago airport and saying they would not use it. Also Mayor Daley, who initially supported a third airport in the Lake Calumet area, but withdrew his support when that site was vetoed by the Illinois state legislature in 1992. And the villages of Peotone, Monee, and Beecher, whose communities would bear the brunt of the infrastructure costs of airport-associated development, as well as the loss of open space; an increase in noise, air, and water pollution; and other negative impacts.

The Will County Forest Preserve District also opposes a Peotone airport. which would almost completely surround the Raccoon Grove and Monee Reservoir preserves and adversely affect other nearby preserves such as Goodenow Grove and Middle Plum. This would be a severe blow to the open space preserves of the county with the least forest preserve land of any in Northeastern Illinois.

The Will County Farm Bureau and the Illinois Farm Bureau are against the Peotone airport, too. They note that it would consume about 24,000 acres, much of it farmland, and drive ninety-five operating farms out of business in one of the last counties in Northeastern Illinois that still has much farmland. And the Federal Emergency Management Agency is concerned about the potential increases in downstream flooding that the airport development would create on a site containing five streams, 1,600 acres of floodplain land, and 550 acres of wetlands.

Leaving aside the severe noise, air, and water pollution that all airports cause (see the Natural Resource Defense Council’s 1996 report "Flying Off Course: Environmental Impacts of America’s Airports" for details), the need for a third airport is far from proven. O’Hare’s international flights grew by just 9.5 percent in 1997, and only 39 percent over the decade from 1985 to 1995, while domestic flights remained relatively static. Yet IDOT consultants project a 260 percent increase in domestic flights at O’Hare by 2010, and a 470 percent increase in international flights.

This is not to mention the Gary Regional Airport, which already exists and has capacity for expansion. Then again, let’s mention it. Although IDOT did not include it in their original capacity projections, Mayor Daley has included Gary in his plans — in fact, he has formed a regional airport authority with Gary and has funneled $4.5 million to the Gary airport for improvements. Given that the Gary airport is closer to the Loop than Peotone and is located relatively close to the already-built South Shore & South Bend rail line, it might be a much better option for a third regional airport than Peotone.

Furthermore, it seems quite possible that the current federal cap on flights at O’Hare could be lifted by 2002 (not that this is a good thing for Chicago residents). The House has passed legislation that would phase out the cap gradually, and the Senate has a version that would end the cap immediately. (The House legislation faces a potential Presidential veto due to an unrelated issue.) In addition, slots currently allotted to military planes at O’Hare might well become available to commercial air carriers soon.

Money No Object?

Current projections of cost for the Peotone airport include $468 million for Illinois’ initial share of the project, with later expansions giving a total cost of $4.9 billion. But those numbers may fall far short of actual costs. First, these figures assume that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) — which has not yet approved the proposed Peotone airport — would fund 50 to 72 percent of the project’s cost. But the FAA historically has funded only 15 to 25 percent of similar projects.

Illinois might want to take a hard look at that MidAmerica Airport in Mascoutah, Illinois (twenty-four miles east of St. Louis), which politicians chose to build before any airlines had committed to the project (the same situation in which the proposed Peotone airport would find itself). The airport took $330 million to build — and was only that cheap because it shares runways with Scott Air Force Base. So far, military planes are the only planes flying there.

IDOT and Governor Ryan should thoroughly investigate some of the other transportation options available for the region before pushing through a third airport that many Illinois residents and most airlines don’t want. High-speed rail, for example, becomes more of an option each day. Currently proposed high-speed rail lines would radiate out from a Chicago hub to Detroit, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and St. Louis, as well as the medium-sized cities in between, such as Ann Arbor and Kalamazoo in Michigan, Bloomington and Springfield in Illinois, and Madison, Wisconsin. High-speed rail pollutes less than aircraft, and would also cost significantly less than a third airport — just over $1 billion, as opposed to that $4.9 billion minimum for a Peotone airport.

And the south suburbs can benefit from economic development that is much less risky and polluting than a third airport. For example, in Lake Calumet, which narrowly escaped the albatross of an airport development, a coalition of concerned citizens and environmental groups has been working for years on a proposal to protect the region as an ecological park. That proposal came a step closer to actuality in 1997, when the National Park Service conducted a feasibility study and concluded that the region was worthy of being designated a National Heritage Area.

Although such a designation would not provide the protection of a national park designation, it would go a long way toward preserving the region’s features — natural, historical, cultural, and economic. And it could lead to an increase in tourism as an economic force in the Lake Calumet area.

Interestingly enough, the prime mover in Congress on this issue is Congressman Weller, one of the supposed supporters of the Peotone airport. Weller is planning to introduce legislation that would officially designate Lake Calumet a National Heritage Area. This goes to show that political will can follow where citizen interest leads it.

Illinois can choose a path of smart growth, or sprawl growth; more tollways or better public transit; airports or open space. Let’s make the right decision, and help convince our public officials to make the right one too.

Resources
For more information about the proposed Peotone airport:

Chicagoland Transportation and Air Quality Commission c/o Center for Neighborhood Technology, 773-278-4800 ext. 2020

Environmental Law and Policy Center of the Midwest (ELPC), 312-759-3400

Keep Chicago and Illinois Flying (airport booster group), 312-793-6160

Sierra Club, Illinois Chapter, 312-251-1680

Places to send letters or call to oppose the proposed Peotone airport:

Hon. Governor George Ryan, 207 Statehouse, Springfield, IL 62706, 217-782-0244, e-mail: governor@state.il.us

Kirk Brown, Secretary, Illinois Department of Transportation, 2300 S. Dirksen Parkway, Springfield, IL 62764, 217-782-5597

Cecelia L. Hunziker, Regional Administrator, Federal Aviation Administration, Great Lakes Region, 2300 E. Devon Ave., Des Plaines, IL 60018, 847-294-7294

Associate Administrator for Airports, Federal Aviation Administration, 800 Independence Ave., S.W., Washington, D.C. 20591, 202-267-9471, e-mail: WebmasterARP@mail.hq.faa.gov

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