Story by Rodger Nichols for Gorge Country Media
There was some good news from yesterday’s Klickitat County Commissioner meeting. First was an end to the burn ban in the county. Emergency Management Director Jeff King asked for the commissioners’ approval and answered a quick question from commission chair Ron Ihrig:
“I have a resolution before you to rescind the burn ban across the county in all three burn ban zones, effective tomorrow, Wednesday, October 15. At midnight tonight? Zero zero zero zero one.”
And in the morning workshop, Columbia Gorge Regional Airport Manager Jeff Renard said the FAA – the Federal Aviation Administration – had visited the airport two weeks ago.
“Very pleased with what we’re doing. The piece that they’re most excited about is that they invested in that ramp project at $3.4 million and gave us those four taxiways, and inside 24 months, we’ve got buildings going up against every piece of blacktop. They’ve got blacktop all over the Northwest that they paid to put in, and nothing ever happened. I told him that we’d be back looking for some more blacktop very soon because we’ll have everybody built out. And that’s exactly what they want to see.”
And a bit of networking Renard did a couple of years ago, meeting the King County airport manager paid off big time for Klickitat County. As commissioners thumbed through his report, he announced that he was able to make a deal for:
“About $250,000 worth of equipment for $8,000. The snowplow in the picture is 24 feet wide and the broom is 22 feet wide. The broom also has a 200-mile-an-hour blower for blowing the snow and the gravel off the runways and taxiways. This is a game-changer for the airport. It used to take us most of a day to open up the airport. With this equipment, we can have a runway and a taxiway open for Life Flight in about 20 minutes.”
Renard says the equipment may be used, but it in excellent shape, with $10,000 worth of tires on the snowplow. It may have taken two years to get there, but to trade $8,000 for a quarter million dollars worth of hardware was worth the wait.