TTS Urges Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg to Stop Funding for TTN Expansion
The Honorable Pete Buttigieg
U.S. Secretary of Transportation
Office of the Secretary US Department of Transportation
1200 New Jersey Ave, SE
Washington, DC 20590
May 5, 2023
Dear Secretary Buttigieg:
Your recent visit to the Trenton-Mercer Airport has compelled us to reach out and urge you not to fund the proposed expansion of the Airport. The plans for the Airport’s terminal and infrastructure have been misrepresented to the public as simply the replacement of an old building, when they are in fact a major expansion of the Airport’s capacity. As a result of this misrepresentation, inadequate environmental studies were conducted, and the public has been misled. This project will have untold environmental and health impacts in the region — and we oppose any federal infrastructure funding to support it.
Calling this project merely a “terminal replacement” is a blatant lie. The Airport is proposing to quadruple the size of the existing terminal, construct parallel taxiways, double the number of gates from two to four, add boarding bridges, double TSA screening areas, increase the terminal apron by 43 percent, and increase the size of the Runway Protection Zone.
The current project must also be considered against the backdrop of Mercer County’s extensive terminal expansions over the past 10+ years, which included the addition of gates and the service of Frontier Airlines, a high frequency/low fare (HF/LF) carrier. These changes, completed without proper FAA approval or completion of an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), resulted in exponential growth of daily enplanements and flights. The FAA advised the County, at least twice, that an expansion to four gates and addition of a HF/LF carrier would require an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). Yet no EIS was ever prepared for the earlier expansions or the current project.
When viewed through this cumulative lens, it becomes even more impossible to deny the impacts of this project on the surrounding communities.
In addition to concerns posed by aircraft emissions, noise impacts, parking, traffic, and other environmental/health issues that an EIS would evaluate, the Airport sits on land that is heavily contaminated with PFAS compounds. The Airport expansion project threatens to dislodge these dangerous chemicals into the environment and drinking water of millions of people.
It is astounding that the County and FAA are once again putting the health and wellbeing of our communities in jeopardy by circumventing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which requires an EIS to thoroughly evaluate all environmental impacts.
We urge you not to approve any funding and to stop the County from moving forward with this project until an EIS and Health Risk Assessment have been completed and the PFAS contamination is fully evaluated and remediated.
Thank you for your consideration of our concerns.
Sincerely,
Robin R. Karpf, MD, President
Trenton Threatened Skies, Inc.
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