For more than a decade in south Sacramento County, the 4,800-acre Valensin Ranch portion of the Cosumnes River Preserve and a hardly used private-use airstrip coexisted. No problems.
A proposal for a new public-use Mustang Airport with 100 hangars and 25 tiedowns has changed all that. Now the issue has landed in the lap of the county Board of Supervisors. Either the county stands by its investment in the preserve or it allows a public-use airport with tens of thousands of flights per year. A preserve and a public-use airport simply are not compatible uses.
The preserve borders the current airstrip on the north and west, and partly on the south. Nine nonprofit and government partners of the preserve, including Sacramento County, have invested $150 million in restoration efforts to attract birds. Anyone visiting the site today can see turkey vultures, egrets, herons, cormorants, geese, ducks, sandhill cranes, hawks – and the largest bird rookery in the county (one of the largest in the state, with 139 nests).
To date, bird/aircraft conflicts have not been an issue because of the limited number of flights – two or three a week. That private use could continue without controversy.
A public-use airport is another story, however.
The Sacramento County Airport System estimates that at a typical public-use airport serving small aircraft, each plane based at the airport would generate 380 flights per year. For the proposed Mustang Airport, SCAS cut that to 190 flights per year – that means 120 airport-based aircraft (assuming five vacancies) would generate more than 20,000 flights a year.
The proponents have offered a self-imposed limitation of 7,200 flights a year, promoting storage at a “self-reduced activity field.” That’s absurd. Such a pledge would be unenforceable.
But the real issue is this: The preserve is designed to attract wildlife that the Federal Aviation Administration says is hazardous to aircraft. While the proposed public-use airport would not be FAA-certified, the FAA recommends that land-use planners and operators of non-certified airports follow Advisory Circular 150/5200-33B: For public-use airports serving piston-powered aircraft, hazardous wildlife attractants should be 5,000 feet from the nearest air operations area.
The proposed public-use Mustang Airport would not comply. The expanded runway would be less than 200 feet from Badger Creek and 3,200 feet from Horseshoe Lake. Wetlands and vernal pools that attract birds abound in the 5,000-foot zone. Public safety would, of course, demand that a public-use airport discourage bird presence to diminish the potential of bird/aircraft collisions.
At the last minute, today’s Board of Supervisors hearing on the issue was pulled. The county counsel decided that the matter should first go to the Sacramento Area Council of Governments, which acts as the county’s Airport Land Use Commission, to determine land-use compatibility. Good move.
In the end, common sense should prevail. Almost $150 million in mostly public funds has gone into creating the Cosumnes River Preserve. A new public-use airport is incompatible with that preserve and the tens of thousands of birds it attracts each year.