Commissioners favor getting Greenville airport taxiway project off the ground

By Stuart Hedstrom
Staff Writer

GREENVILLE — The town of Greenville is currently working on a plan for the construction of a parallel taxiway at the municipal airport, which would make the area safer for aircraft taking off and landing. During a Feb. 2 meeting of the Piscataquis County Commissioners, Town Manager John Simko and engineer Shane McDougall of Stantec in Caribou gave a presentation on the project and asked for the county’s financial support in the airport upgrade.

McDougall said on the current main runway “from one end to the other you can’t see,” due to an approximate five-foot change in elevation from one end to the other. “The parallel taxiway is the best way to mitigate the safety issue,” he said.

Simko said there have been no collisions at the Greenville Municipal Airport, “but we are seeing more and more traffic, more planes coming in. You are seeing more people unfamiliar with it coming in.”

He gave an analogy of a pothole in his driveway. Simko said he is aware of where the pothole is and drives around the road hazard, but someone traveling on his driveway for the first time would not have this knowledge and could hit the pothole. “If you are not familiar with that are you setting yourself up for a collision,?” he said about the runway.

“It’s just another additional safety measure,” McDougall added.

The estimated project cost is $3,090,675 with the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) potentially funding 90 percent or over $2.78 million of the expenses. The remaining 10 percent of costs would be split between the Maine Department of Transportation and the town — for about $154,500 for each entity. Simko explained about $105,000 of the municipal contribution would be covered through donated materials, such as gravel from Plum Creek.

During a special town meeting, Greenville citizens approved borrowing up to the $154,534 to cover the town’s share. “We are trying to lessen that as much as possible,” Simko said. He said that some of those using the Greenville Municipal Airport live in the nearby unorganized territories and “we are asking for 10 percent of the local share” or $15,400-plus from both Piscataquis and Somerset counties.

“Greenville is in Piscataquis County and we are the county, and we would benefit from it,” Commissioner Jim Annis said as he and the other county officials favored the parallel taxiway project concept.

Commissioners Chair Fred Trask said the county contribution could go to the budget committee to be looked at for inclusion in a future spending plan. County Manager Tom Lizotte said the $15,400 could be spread over several years.

According to the project plan, grant applications are due in May with funds awarded in July. Should grants be awarded construction could start in August and finish in November, with the project closed out in January of 2017.

In other business, Lizotte said he has reviewed a proposal of the Municipal Review Committee (MRC) for solid waste disposal with this operation moving from PERC in Orrington to a future facility in Hampden, operated by the Maryland-based Fiberight, after 2018. The 187 MRC members will need to each make a decision on the organization’s proposal over the next few months

“There’s no rush on it but we don’t want to do it at the last minute,” Lizotte said. He said the county needs to make a decision by May 1, and the commissioners could have a related agenda item for one of its March meetings.

“My sense is pretty much everyone will go with the Fiberight proposal,” Lizotte said.

Lizotte also told the commissioners that he received an estimate from CES, Inc. on the costs to to decommission wells at a pair of former county landfills in Frenchtown and Lily Bay. He said the $5,000 estimate is what was expected and “that’s something I will put on your next agenda because it didn’t come in in time for this one.”

Both landfills were closed and capped in 1994, and the two sites have been monitored since to ensure there was no adjacent ground contamination per Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) regulations. A DEP geologist has recommended that the wells be decommissioned, which requires an engineering study such as what CES is proposing. The parcels will still need to be mowed indefinitely to help prevent trees from taking root and possibly breaking the seals.