FFA grant starts Colfax airport runway rebuild

The Port of Whitman County was notified last week about receiving a grant for the airport at Colfax.

Last September, a Federal Aviation Administration engineer told port commissioners that the runway at the Port of Whitman County Business Air Center must be rebuilt to be in compliance with federal standards.

The two-year project, with a total cost estimate of approximately $3 million, includes the design and engineering phase this year and the construction phase in 2015. The construction includes a sub-base that will go down 15 to 18 inches, base, asphalt, wiring and lighting.

Although the engineer congratulated port commissioners about improvements to the airport, after a compliance inspection, she also urged the commissioners to consider rebuilding the runway as soon as possible. She also brought a sample of crumbled pavement off the edge of the runway to the commissioners to stress the point.

The first part of the project is for the design portion. The FAA grant is for a little more than $244,000, 90 percent of the total cost of the design project.

The state Department of Transportation also designated about $11,000, five percent of this portion of the project, as a grant. The port will kick in another five percent to complete this phase.

This part of the project includes not only the design phase, but engineers also will be part of the entire project, from design to the end of construction, according to port property and development manager Debbie Snell.

The construction phase, which is tentatively planned for 2015, will involve a separate grant, but the engineers hired by this grant will supervise the construction phase.

The lights on the runway’s edges are either missing or dislocated and the markings are faded. The FAA engineer also questioned the structural integrity of the runway as she examined the piece of asphalt she took from the runway.

The engineer also told commissioners that in 2011 the FAA took core samples of the more than 3,200-foot runway and found a high water table with layers of clay and silt and absence of a base support layer.

The FAA engineer estimated that when the project is complete, the life of the newly constructed runway, with regular maintenance, will be at least 20 years.

Snell has said that fill from the runway project could be utilized to fill low spots at the airport, making sites more buildable. If sites were up to building standards, four to five more hangars could be built.