PalomarAirport: Closure: The Carlsbad CUP and the County, Blog #21

Today, a trade.  More on Carlsbad Conditional Use Permit [CUP] 172 but a shorter blog.        

We need closure on the County, Carlsbad, and CUP 172 jigsaw puzzle.  Not Dr. Phil closure. Analytic closure.    

From Blogs 14, 17 and 19, we know that the County has not kept Palomar Airport as a basic transport general aviation airport as its CUP requires.  From Blog 20, we know federal law allows the County to maintain general aviation limits if necessary to avoid or resolve a serious burden that the FAA would place on the County as an airport proprietor.   

We also know the County and the FAA claim that the CUP is unenforceable because it would limit Palomar traffic.

The only remaining mystery is: What happened in 1979 when the County applied for and received Carlsbad CUP 172?  Did the politicians intentionally mislead the public?  Or did they then recognize the problems that the Palomar landfill posed?

The CUP History

The 1979-1980 Carlsbad-County records show the following:

• Carlsbad citizens opposed Palomar expansion without a vote of the people.  Discontent produced an initiative sent to the City Council.
• To prevent an initiative vote, the Council adopted an ordinance.  The ordinance requires a popular vote when a Palomar project requires a Carlsbad planning or zoning change.
• Concurrently, the County applied for and received CUP 172 limiting Palomar operations to those of a basic transport general aviation airport.
• When CUP 172 was adopted Carlsbad, the County, and the FAA were aware of 3 different landfills at Palomar, including the Unit 3 landfill bordering the east side of the Palomar runway.
• Carlsbad, the County, and the FAA were aware that small general aviation  [GA] planes do not conflict with closed landfills.   Small planes fly light, fly slower, fly few passengers, and require short runway safety areas.  For these planes, a 300 foot Palomar runway safety area outside the Unit 3 landfill was fine.   GA planes did not raise serious landfill environmental contamination or safety issues.
• For the foregoing reasons, the parties knowingly accepted the CUP 172 limits.

The FAA and County now argue that Carlsbad and the County may never limit Palomar traffic.   To accept their position is to believe that CUP 172 Condition 11 was always a sham, a “wink and a nod” to dupe Carlsbad voters who thought they were getting a limited growth airport.

More likely a court will agree that the CUP 172 general aviation limit was valid because it shielded Carlsbad and the County from Palomar airport environmental and safety harms associated with landfills that are by definition incompatible with heavy, multipassenger, aircraft use.