By Valerie Lovett Florida Freedom News

PANAMA CITY – A pair of Washington, D.C.-based environmental groups and a local pilots’ organization filed a lawsuit in New York on Tuesday aiming to stop the planned relocation of the Panama City-Bay County International Airport to a 4,000-acre site at West Bay.
The suit challenges the Federal Aviation Administration’s record of decision, or ROD, released in September that determined the West Bay location is the best alternative to meet the airport’s operational needs.
The ROD was the final hurdle in making the project eligible for some $100 million in federal grants necessary to help fund the $330 million project. The remainder of the project will be funded via state grants, the sale of the current 715-acre airport site and revenue bonds.
The plaintiffs in Tuesday’s suit maintain the current airport site remains the best environmental alternative for Bay County and that the FAA broke federal law when it decided otherwise.
“The FAA’s decision to build this ‘airport to nowhere’ is illegal,” said Melanie Shepherdson, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The law is clear: The agency has to pick the alternative that is least damaging to the environment.”
The NRDC was joined by the Defenders of Wildlife and the local Friends of PFN, a general aviation organization that has been opposed to the relocation project.
Shepherdson said the groups want the court to throw out the FAA’s decision, effectively stopping the project that is set to begin construction early next year.
She said the FAA also violated federal law when it failed to consider the cumulative environmental effects of the airport, including ancillary development spurred by the new airport.
And the FAA could be in violation of the federal Endangered Species Act thanks to recent spottings of a rare woodpecker along a nearby river, Shepherdson said.
Sightings of the ivorybilled woodpecker along the Choctawhatchee River should give pause to relocation efforts, said Defenders of Wildlife attorney Jason Rylander.
“Any proposal for major development in the area must consider the risk it would pose to the future of this bird — as well as the other endangered and threatened wildlife that live there,” Rylander said.
Fred Werner, who heads up the Friends of PFN, said that falling traffic at the airport highlights the lack of need for a new one.
“Any reasonable growth in demand could be met by expanding the current airport,” Werner said.
Since the fall of 2001, the number of daily airline flights in and out of the airport has dropped by half, from 50 to about 24 arrivals and departures, according to the airport’s monthly flight activity reports.
But the purpose of the relocation project is to create traffic, Airport Authority officials maintain.
The challenge, said Airport Authority executive board Chairman Joe Tannehill said, is not a surprise.
Anyone looking to challenge the FAA’s environmental impact statement had two months to do so; Tuesday marked the final day of that challenge period.
“It’s just interesting how folks who don’t even live here know what’s best for us,” Tannehill said. “I do respect the people who live here and don’t want to see it moved, but they’re taking an awfully short-sighted approach to a really bad problem for us if we don’t do this.”
Tannehill said he does not believe the legal action will be of any consequence to the relocation effort.
“They’re hoping this will be tied up in court for years,” he said, “but we’re going to move forward; we have no choice. To play their game is going to end up in disaster for this community.”
Tannehill said he takes exception to the statement that the new airport would be an “airport to nowhere.”
“This is really a slam on everybody that lives here,” Tannehill said. “If you’re from New York or Washington, D.C., you may think that Bay County is nowhere, but they’ve got a big surprise coming.”
Tannehill said there is no documented proof of the existence of an ivory-billed woodpecker in Bay County or on the Choctawhatchee, for that matter.
“It was not sighted; (researchers) heard a sound that they thought could have been the ivory-billed, but there’s no proof to it,” Tannehill said.
A team of researchers led by respected Auburn ornithologist Dr. Geoff Hill reported in September that they believed they spotted the woodpecker 13 times last winter. Though they used recordings of 300 distinctive calls and knocks as evidence that the bird is living in the river basin, Hill stressed the evidence was nonconclusive and researchers still needed a clear photograph or video.
Tannehill said to say there were confirmed sightings is an “out-and-out falsehood.”
“If that bird that hasn’t been seen since the 1930s is still alive, we have no land like that up there where we’re going to put our airport,” Tannehill said, referring to the swampy terrain in which the birds are said to live.
Airport Authority Executive Director Randy Curtis said the lawsuit is no big surprise.
“We’ve assumed that from the beginning they would file some type of challenge,” Curtis said. “Our work efforts have been with that in mind to make sure the appropriate laws are being followed throughout the entire process as far as environmental permitting.”
FAA spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said that the agency has not yet received the lawsuit, but after they are formally served the FAA will work with the U.S. Department of Justice to respond accordingly.

The U.S. Forestry Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service think the evidence is credible enough to once again add the bird to the Endangered Species List. So, last week the ivory-billed was once again added to the FWS Endangered Species List. This means that an updated EIS (Environmental Impact Statement) may be needed for the proposed airport, and alternatives including No-Build and mitigation to the affected area will have to be laid out in detailed fashion.

I don't know what Mr. Tannehill is getting at here, but out of 4,000 acres, how could anyone say for sure that there are no wetlands (waters of the U.S./potential ivory-billed habitat) anywhere within such an expansive landscape?

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"We enact sensible, sustainable development strategies that accomodate growth while protecting the environment and the things that make Florida special" --Peter S. Rummell, Chairman and CEO, The St. Joe Company

What I should have said, but left out, is that the bird was added to the List because the evidence is credible enought to the proper agencies, who think the bird is not extinct as previously thought. The Piney Woods area of the ArkLaTex (mainly Arkansas), an area just west of the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia, and Seminole County, Georgia are also areas where the ivory-billed woodpecker has allegedly been sighted.

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"We enact sensible, sustainable development strategies that accomodate growth while protecting the environment and the things that make Florida special" --Peter S. Rummell, Chairman and CEO, The St. Joe Company

As the info trickles out, it seems the Choctawhatchee ivory-bills MAY actually exist. There is a growing (and large) body of evidence, compared to the Arkansas sightings.

Most intriguing are the results from audio recoding devices the team has planted. They have 99 "double knocks", the bird's distinctive BAM-BAM as it pecks twice in quick succession, and 210 "kent" calls, the bird's tin-trumpet toot of a call. Go here to listen:

http://web2.uwindsor.ca/courses/biol...IBWOsounds.php

OK skeptics, I'm aware that these could be faked, as could photos and video. But you've got to admit, the reseachers submit themselves to considerable derision and little gain by taking their position.

I hope they find some feathers, or droppings so they can do a DNA match off feathers on one of the museum taxidermy birds. That should do it.

As far as the airport goes, I'm having a hard time swallowing the "build it and they will come" justification. Ultimately, this isn't a major metro area, and I have a hard time believing it will ever support a major metro airport. I do believe there will be tourism and business growth spin-off, just not enough to justify the $ and environmental impact. Just one largely SOTP uninformed viewpoint, but hey, my vote counts as much at the polls as much as the most informed one.

There "may" be a loch ness monster in Scotland.

Its just a bird, and if it is alive I dont think it only lives in this area. I hear they tast like chicken. I wonder if they care about unborn children as much as this bird.

very true.....

I do think this is funny but I am sure some people will not. My concern is that if it comes down to the woodpecker keeping the airport from coming in then someone may try to hunt it down and kill it.



IMHO I personally believe that if this airport is built people will come. SO many drive to pensacola and tallahassee just to fly in and out.

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The big difference is that there were once LOTS of ivory bills, before their habitats were logged out.

I don't see any connection whatsoever between debating abortion rights and searching for a bird once thought to be extinct.

As far as the airport goes, I'm not a Bay County resident and I ultimately have mixed feelings about whether I support it or not. It may well lead to growth, which always has its pluses and minuses.

If there is a successful lawsuit challenge to the airport, I'd hate if it hinged on ivory-bills, found or still searching. It's always better if there's a win-win solution to environmental concerns in development. We had a similar concern in my old (historic) neighborhood in Memphis, where we successfully balanced development and preservation to the benefit of developers and property values for owners of old houses. I'd hope a similar situation, albeit more complex, could be found for the airport.

And I still question whether "build it and they will come" will be accurate. No doubt, as IBD says, tourists will fly to PC who would have previously gone to VPS or PNS. But will that be enough to justify the expense and impact? I have no idea.

Actually I know of a person that shot and ate one and he said it tasted like bald eagle.

Sorry Mr Tree Frog. I will try to keep my lack of understand to my self. Has St Joe agreed to not develop 70k acres around this Airport sight? And if the Airport was ditched it seems to me that St Joe could develope alot of this land in the future.

And bald eagle tastes just like California Condor, right?

For sure. Looking at a map of what they own, they could develop enough of the panhandle to add 3 or 4 million people, assuming they had buyers.

Just in from the ATL Journal/Constitution

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news...metpanama.html