Midvale Airport runway will revert to gravel

Published by admin on Wed, 09/25/2024 - 7:00pm

Above, left, is a recent view of the Midvale Airport runway after the cracked and deteriorated asphalt was removed. Below, is the aircraft parking ramp, which needed to be removed for the same reasons. The original plan was to replace the asphalt and use the existing base, but when construction of the new runway began, it was discovered the base wouldn’t work, adding another $450,000 to a project already costing over $600,000. As a result, the runway will temporarily revert back to gravel. Meanwhile, administrators will search for more funds. Photo by Philip A. Janquart.
By: 
Philip A. Janquart
 Over 20 years after it was paved, Midvale’s airport runway will revert back to a gravel landing strip, for now.
 The inevitable was realized last week during a meeting to discuss how to move forward after it was discovered that the gravel base, the layer of material directly beneath the runway’s asphalt, would need to be rebuilt.
 The discovery brought construction work to a halt while administrators gathered to take a closer look at whether the existing base could be used and to find a possible solution to what suddenly became a funding dilemma.
 During the meeting, considering both the condition of the gravel base and current funds available for the project, it was decided that the runway will not receive new asphalt and be reverted back to gravel as it was prior to 2000 when it was first paved. 
 “I was in a meeting with ITD (Idaho Transportation Department), ITD Division of Aeronautics, J-U-B Engineers and Midvale Mayor Brian Graham,” Washington County commissioner Gordon Wilkerson told the Signal American in a phone interview last week. “We had a very long, very constructive meeting about that and the opinion of the engineering firm … they felt strongly that this base needs to be rebuilt.”
 In addition to the issue of runway longevity, there is a safety concern for crews and heavy equipment during construction.
 “We don’t have big aircraft that land on that strip,” Wilkerson noted. “But the issue is, you have to be able to put asphalt down with heavy equipment. And from what the engineers say, with what’s there, it would be difficult to compact that material enough at this point to make it safe or feasible to run that heavy equipment on it, even once.”
Funding:
 The City of Midvale initially received a $570,000 grant from Idaho Division of Aeronautics to remove and replace the cracked and deteriorated asphalt on the 2,800-foot runway and aircraft parking ramp.  
 The city added its own funds, approximately $67,000 it had saved through the county’s mill levy.
 Airport Manager Karson Craig anticipated the need to replace the runway more than two years ago and approached the county, asking that the levy be bumped from $5,000 per year to $20,000 in order to put money away for the project.
 Together, it was believed that the grant and levy money would be enough to cover the repaving project.
 In planning for the project and calculating the anticipated cost, J-U-B Engineers relied on historical information through ITD that indicated the gravel base would be suitable.
 “When we paved it the first time, it was just a bare dirt runway with a little sand on it,” explained Craig in a phone interview. “When it came time for them to pave it, the ground was so hard that it met compaction [requirements]. They put some crushed rock on it, just for a fine grade, and everything was copacetic because the ground was hard, and they were able to asphalt it.”
 It was impossible, however, for anyone to foresee a problem that had developed over the 24 years since the runway was built. Water was routinely trapped between the asphalt and the ground underneath the base, degrading the base layer. Freezing and thawing most likely added to the problem.
 “The asphalt itself was causing water not to evaporate away from the dirt … so, it got super saturated,” Craig said. “Asphalt holds moisture really, really well underneath it … it’s like a lid on a pot and nothing can evaporate. And because of the hardpan that lays underneath the dirt, it can’t sub-out either, so it trapped the water and that’s why we got the different conditions.”
 It left the city scrambling to find resources to pay for the extra $450,000 to rebuild the base layer on top of a project that is already costing over $600,000.
 “They are going to put the airport runway back into operation within the budget, but it’s not going to be paved,” Wilkerson said. “And they are going to go back next year and see if there can’t be funding to go ahead and pave it later. They are going to work on getting funding to put it back to an asphalt runway.”
 Wilkerson added that Midvale Airport needs asphalt as opposed to dirt.
 “One of the reasons to have that as an asphalt runway … years ago they used to fly ag planes off that, on dirt, and it worked fine,” he said. “But with new equipment, the agricultural planes are getting way more powerful and have a tendency to wash out that runway, they just blow the material off the ground.
 “So, that’s one of the reasons they looked so hard at paving it in the beginning because it was very difficult to maintain a dirt runway with the agricultural planes that fly off that. That’s one of the reasons; there are many others, too.”
 City of Midvale administrators added that performing the additional work needed to get the runway and aircraft parking ramp back to a usable gravel surface and re-opened this fall requires good weather. 
 If the weather doesn’t cooperate, the repairs will need to be put off until next year, which would require the runway and aircraft parking ramp to remain closed.
 

 

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