Eastern Washington residents sought for new aviation work group
YAKIMA – A second statewide panel seeking solutions to current and future overcrowding at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport is ready to begin boarding.
Officials with the Washington state Department of Transportation announced Tuesday that applications to join the 19-member Commercial Aviation Work Group are open.
While many members will be from aviation and transportation industries, the panel also will have seven citizen representatives, with at least two from Eastern Washington. Two will be from Western Washington and the other three can be from anywhere in the state.
Citizen representatives on the work group “must represent the public interests in the communities that are included in the work group’s site research and understand the impacts of a large commercial aviation facility on a community,” the WSDOT news release stated.
To apply, visit Gov. Jay Inslee’s Governors Board and Commission Profiles website and scroll down to “Commercial Aviation Work Group” on the alphabetical list of state boards and commissions. The 19 work group positions will be listed, and an “apply” link appears at the end of the list.
Inslee will appoint the 19 members later this year at a time to be determined.
Other members of the work group will include two representatives of commercial service airports and port districts in Eastern Washington. One of these must represent an airport with a runway of at least 13,500 feet in length, and another must be from a county with a population of 400,000 or more.
Neither requirement fits Yakima – the county’s population was roughly 256,000 in the 2020 U.S. Census, and the primary runway at Yakima Air Terminal is 7,604 feet long. Yakima’s airport also is not associated with a port district. Spokane County residents, however, would qualify.
Two other work group members must be from statewide environmental organizations.
The work group was created during the past year’s Legislative session, via House Bill 1791, after heavy criticism of the Commercial Aviation Coordinating Commission and its three finalist sites for a new airport to replace Sea-Tac in Pierce and Thurston counties.
Like its predecessor, the work group will evaluate the long-range commercial aviation and transportation needs of the state. Unlike CACC, the work group may consider alternatives for additional aviation capacity that include expanding use of existing airports and multimodal opportunities.
Yakima city officials sent a letter to the CACC in January requesting that the Yakima airport be considered among the possible solutions to Sea-Tac overcrowding, but a final survey of CACC members in June showed the majority did not see Yakima as a viable solution due to its distance from the Seattle area.
Yakima Air Terminal Director Rob Hodgman, who was deeply involved in the CACC process before being hired in Yakima earlier this year, presented a proposal to the Washington state Transportation Commission that would use electric-powered aircraft to bring people from elsewhere in the state to a hub in Yakima.
Hodgman’s future-looking plan, which never was considered or vetted by CACC members, would have passengers from the electric aircraft board larger planes at an expanded Yakima airport to travel to their destinations across the country. Among other things, Hodgman’s proposal requires advances in the range and carrying capacity of electric-powered aircraft.
Information about the Commercial Aviation Work Group is available at aviationworkgroup.com.