_{Thumbnail image courtesy of the Border Coast Regional Airport Authority}

Upon learning that the condition of their secondary runway is poor to very poor, Border Coast Regional Airport Authority commissioners felt that reconstruction rather than rehabilitation may be worth the additional cost.

Reconstructing Runway 12-30 at the Del Norte County Regional Airport would cost about $3 million more than rehabilitating the runway, BCRAA Director Sean Rosenthal said Thursday. With an estimated price tag of more than $11 million, BCRAA would have to pay about $550,000 while the Federal Aviation Administration would fund the rest, he said. 

Citing a 2021 pavement condition index survey conducted by GRI Pavement Management, Rosenthal said the consultant gave the keel section — the middle third of the runway where planes land — a score of 39. The very poor threshold is a score of 40, the airport director told commissioners.

“They have to find that an automatic reconstruction is usually (a score) under 40, but since it’s 39 and it’s so close, they want to see if money could be saved,” Rosenthal said.

According to Rosenthal, Runway 12-30 has weathered asphalt and cracking along the center line. There is also cracking across the runway near its markings. Some of those cracks have been sealed, but “we have a lot more cracks to go on this one,” Rosenthal said.

The predesign study will be done during the 2026-27 fiscal year and is expected to cost $172,880 according to Rosenthal’s presentation. The FAA will pay for about 95% of that project’s cost with the Airport Authority’s contribution being about $8,644, Rosenthal said.

In 2027, the runway project will enter its design phase. At that point, the BCRAA Board will choose whether to rehabilitate the runway or reconstruct it. Construction is expected to start in 2028, according to Rosenthal.

The project to reconstruct, or rehabilitate, Runway 12-30 comes about two years after it rehabilitated its primary runway, Runway 18-36. For that endeavor, the BCRAA secured about $7.2 million in FAA funding. The authority’s member agencies contributed a total of $415,000.

On Thursday, Rosenthal asked told commissioners they may have a choice between rehabilitating Runway 12-30 or reconstructing it. A rehabilitation would involve milling about 4 inches of the existing asphalt on the runway and replacing it, he said. 

A full reconstruction would remove all of the asphalt down to the subgrading underneath the runway. 

According to Rosenthal, a rehabilitated runway’s lifespan is about 10 years. A reconstructed runway has a 20-year lifespan.

“The other reason we want to talk about this is, for the growth of our airport right now, runway weight is an issue if we want to grow,” he said. “There’s a misconception that we can’t allow planes more than our posted weight of 43,000 pounds. That’s not true. We can allow planes of anything we want, it’s our runway — 43,000 pounds is calculated by the types of aircraft (the FAA) think are coming in.”

The Del Norte County Regional Airport has hosted C-130s as well as larger aircraft, Rosenthal said. But if the Airport Authority is asking the FAA for more grant funding to address runway issues ahead of its 20-year lifecycle, Rosenthal said, the agency would want to know why.

“They’re going to look at our logs and see what aircraft came in and say, ‘Well, we’re not going to pay for that,’” Rosenthal said. “Can we build it stronger? Yes we can, but we have to pay the difference and I can’t tell you what that is until the design’s done.”

If the Airport Authority does decide to go with a reconstructed Runway 12-30 rather than a rehabilitation, the width will decrease to 100 feet, Rosenthal said. It will be up to BCRAA commissioners to decide if they want to pay to keep the runway’s width at 150 feet, he said.

The Airport Authority’s new chairman, Del Norte County District 3 Supervisor Chris Howard said the reduced width could be problematic for the airport. He also noted that the runway should have been resurfaced every 10 years.

When the airport director said that the runway was last resurfaced about 22 years ago, Howard lamented at a loss of institutional knowledge over the years with directors or board chairs moving on.

“This project should have gone out for bid a decade-plus ago,” he said.