Aerodrome anguish
Residents fear it’s too late to stop private airfield
PARKLAND COUNTY — If an aerodrome isn’t one of the last things you expect to see out here — hard by the farms and acreages that form the backbone of rural Alberta — then you don’t share the locals’ definition of country life.
They live, work and play on land handed down for generations. They like wide open spaces, grain, cattle, peace and quiet. They like their neighbours and love the fact that they aren’t right next door.
They don’t care so much for change, though.
Florence Charlet was raised in her tiny farmhouse, just off Range Road 270, about 10 minutes southeast of Spruce Grove. Her son’s ashes were spread on the sprawling property. Her father’s, too. She and husband Allan have been there since 1988, farming barley and potatoes and managing the Sandhills Recreation Centre on the other side of 270.
But immediately north of the Charlets’ barley field, the Parkland Airport Development Corp. (PADC) has begun the controversial construction of an aerodrome — a strip of land that allows for aircraft to take off and land — and the new scars in the farmland match those on Florence Charlet’s psyche.
The noise and sight of earthmovers and bulldozers pushing around the rich, black topsoil has been bad enough, and Florence Charlet can’t bear the thought of having to live next to an active airfield. But the alternative is equally awful.
“It’s home and I don’t want to move,” she said Thursday, wiping away tears at the kitchen table. “We’ve been here forever.”
Her brother, Dan Rogers, used to live where the aerodrome is taking shape. He sold his 80 acres (32 hectares) for $1.3 million to an unspecified buyer in late August. The buyer was a lawyer representing the PADC.
Company president Robert Gilgen, who has continued construction despite a stopwork order from Parkland County that will take effect Oct.11, down plays opposition to his project, which will provide an alternative for pilots and businesses displaced by the closing of the City Centre Airport.
“Most of the immediate neighbours are not very concerned about it,” he said Friday. “Most of the opposition comes from people further away.”
June O’Donnell and her husband, Leonard, live on the south side of 270, across from the site. “We’re very concerned,” said O’Donnell, who attended a Sept. 10 meeting at the Sandhills hall, at which she said 230 other residents opposed the project and 10 were in favour.
She worries about noise, safety, increased demands on the area’s aquifer and the ability to continue renting out their farmland. But mostly she worries that the fight is already over, because neither the county nor Transport Canada has put a stop to it and the PADC maintains that the Aeronautics Act of 1985 allows for anyone to put an aerodrome on private land.
“We feel very powerless. I came away from that first meeting very discouraged,” said O’Donnell. “It was said there that the U.S. has no laws on guns and we have no laws on airports. I don’t know how we could live under an airport.”
Gilgen said the residents’ worries might not match what he’s building. “It’s not going to be a very busy airport. We feel a lot of the concerns are out of proportion with the size of our development.”
It calls for 30 hangar lots and a 2,600-foot (792-metre) runway in phase one, another 32 lots and an extension of the runway to 5,300 feet (1,615 metres) in phase two — if they exercise the option they have on 140 acres (56 hectares) owned by Lewis Farms, directly east of the site. Jack Lewis said he’s not opposed to the development, but can understand that some people are worried about noise. Lewis Farms did not join the Anti Aerodrome Co-operative, which is spearheaded by Summer Ebinger.
“There are potential risks and real risks to the lives of the people who live there, to the land and to the wildlife. It’s just not an optimal place for an airport,” said Ebinger, a former elementary school teacher and office manager, who had been in a relationship with Florence Charlet’s son and remains very close to the family.
She believes that if the developers extend their runway, it could accommodate a 737-700, with 136 passengers aboard, in dry conditions. Gilgen said there are no plans to have 737s use the aerodrome, nor can there be regularly scheduled flights of any kind, but he might want to see chartered Dash-8s fly out of there.
Ebinger also believes the Aeronautics Act would allow the federal government to prohibit certain kinds of farming, the kind that the Charlets and their neighbours do, on land near the aerodrome if it draws flocks of birds or raises too much dust.
“The feds could say to them you have to harvest at night, because the dust is a safety concern,” said Ebinger.
She has organized opposition, created a website and is conducting a survey. It had 172 respondents as of Wednesday — 148 opposed to the development, 19 in favour, five undecided. She has encouraged residents to write letters to federal Transport Minister Lisa Raitt, Edmonton-Spruce Grove MP Rona Ambrose and Transport Canada.
Every day, Paul Hanlan, county manager of planning and development, finds his email inbox full of that correspondence — he gets CC’d — and much more as residents express concern and disbelief.
“A very typical response is ‘How come nobody talked to me?’ And ‘If it’s been approved, how do I appeal it?’,” Hanlan said. “To the best of our knowledge, there is no avenue of appeal.”
A Transport Canada official in Winnipeg who is familiar with the file did not return a call Friday.
The PADC site is located about 10 kilometres southeast of the Villeneuve Airport, as the crow flies. County officials have maintained their support for an expansion of that facility, and their opposition to the PADC project.
The Charlets fear is that it’s already too late. That the family farm with the pigs, cows, alpacas and generations of history, will never be the same.
Allan Charlet stands in his barley field, considering the worst-case scenario, that the aerodrome goes ahead and they are forced to move. “But who would buy this land now?” he asks.