Wednesday, February 6, 2002

Airport could be a pivotal issue in '02

By DAVE HAMRICK
Editor-at-large

Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport ... I don't think there's any place name in the Southeast whose mention evokes more mixed reactions.

It's the 500-pound gorilla we love to hate.

We have the noise, air pollution, land-grabbing, congestion and, now, water pollution. We also have the tourism trade, the high-paying jobs, the economic generation and the ease of travel.

Try to imagine life without Hartsfield. Can't do it? Take a drive through Moultrie and that should give you a fair idea.

All you folks who moved here and then started showing up at county commission meetings to try and keep anybody else from moving here ... you wouldn't be here.

Oh, but you're thinking how nice that wonderful quality of life in Peachtree City or Brooks would be without all the traffic and all the big boxes moving in? ...

But that wonderful quality of life wouldn't be there either. It takes money to build cart paths, and white table cloth restaurants don't generally move into sleepy little towns.

As soon as somebody comes up with a way to develop the perfect community, others discover it and move in and then it's not perfect anymore. It's like the old disco joke: Nobody goes there anymore ... it's too crowded.

For better and for worse, the airport is the main engine that drives metro Atlanta, and it's a big factor in all of north Georgia and, to a lesser extent, the surrounding states.

There have been voices crying out for decades to remove this very precious commodity from the auspices of the Atlanta municipal government, or at least to develop more layers of oversight. In the past, no one was listening.

But momentum is growing for the airport to be overseen by a state or regional authority. Republicans are pushing hard for that this year and, after their efforts are rebuffed by the Democrats, they'll use it as a campaign issue.

The deicing problems that have come to light, mainly as the result of persistence on the part of some Fayette County water customers, has added fuel to the fire. Not only does this situation reveal long-term problems with the handling of the airport, but it also will put the city's new administration, already having to make huge budget cuts, in a position of having to find many dollars maybe millions to reconstruct the airport's deicing system.

Mayor Franklin may want to seriously consider another alternative privatizing. It would solve a lot of problems for Atlanta.

Even if privatized, the airport could still be overseen by a statewide authority, it seems to my simple mind.

The idea of such an authority is not new. Retired state Rep. Dick Lane of East Point (now living in Coweta County), pushed through legislation years ago creating just such an authority. The governor just never bothered to fund it.

To expedite matters, all that our legislators would have to do is dust off that old document, make whatever changes seem beneficial, and activate the authority.

They'll probably prefer to write their own bill, though, and that's fine too.

In any case, Hartsfield Airport is too important to all of us, and, as we have seen recently, has too great an impact on all of us, to be left alone to function as part of the bureaucracy of a city that can't even pay its bills.

A regional authority is not likely to be created as long as the old boy machine stays in power, but if they squelch the idea, it truly should be a good campaign issue for the wannabes.

It's time to cage this 500-pound gorilla.

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