The Associated Press
6:04 pm, November 30, 2007
A federal appeals court temporarily blocked construction of Bay County’s new airport, granting a request by local pilots and environmental groups opposed to the project.
Continue to 2nd paragraph A three judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York on Thursday issued an interim stay of the Federal Aviation Administration’s 2006 decision allowing the airport to be built.
Friends of PFN - the FAA’s three-letter designation for the city’s existing airport - filed the motion requesting the stay. The group of pilots don’t want the airport moved. The Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmental groups are also parties to litigation opposing the airport relocation plan.
Michael Duncan, an attorney for the Panama City-Bay County Airport Authority, said that airport officials expected the court to hear oral arguments in the case on Dec. 18.
Duncan said officials were trying to determine whether the ruling would prohibit them from moving construction trailers onto the 4,000 acre site, doing surveys and other preliminary work.
The $331 million relocation project is being funded by state grants, federal grants and the sale of the current airport property. It is expected to be the nation’s first new airport since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Land for the project was donated by the St. Joe Co., a real-estate developer founded by the duPont family in the 1930s as a paper company and now Florida’s largest private land owner with about 800,000 acres of undeveloped Panhandle land.
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Information from: The News Herald, http://www.newsherald.com
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