The Trenton-Mercer Airport Terminal Area Improvements Draft Environmental Assessment has been posted online for public review.
The 30-day public review period, began May 3. Mercer County, N.J., has scheduled a two-hour virtual public hearing is set for 7 yo 9 p.m. Wednesday, June 2. It will be recorded and posted at ttnterminal.com.
The complete Draft Environmental Assessment document can be viewed and downloaded at the website.
Opponents of the airport expansion say that Mercer County Executive, Brian Hughes, and TTN airport leadership recently pressured Mercer County commissioners into voting to approve an application for $1.5 million in FAA funds to build the first of four new parallel taxiways.
In voting no for that expansion project, Mercer County Commissioner Lucy Walter stated “this is singularly the most damaging vote that will occur in the history of Mercer County Airport. We will change the tenor of the airport and damage the local community.”
In 2019 the Trenton-Mercer Airport experienced 110,000 takeoff sand landings. Critics fear that when all four taxiways are completed, the airport operations capacity could represent a 400% increase in traffic a year.
“That translates to a jet takeoff and landing every 7.5 minutes,” says Trenton Threatened Skies activist Judith Hoechner.
The so-called maintenance projects the MCE is pushing through with FAA backing involve moving soil and changing water flow in land adjacent to a Superfund site, the organization says.
“An airport does not exist in a vacuum. Its impact goes beyond the runway. The unintended consequences to the health, home, and happiness of the residents of Bucks and Mercer counties cannot be identified nor truly understood without conducting a comprehensive, cumulative Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) that includes the new expanded terminal and the 50 other projects in the Airport Master plan. One piece is interdependent on the others. To segment them is absurd,” says Holly Bussey, president of Bucks Residents for Responsible Airport Management (BRRAM).
“The residents of Pennsylvania and New Jersey have been demanding officials conduct a cumulative EIS since the FAA ruled in 2006 that an EIS would be required if the terminal doubled in size, and these plans are five times as large.”
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