Moving Runway Fill Not So Simple

One of the many difficult problem for the Port in moving forward on the third-runway project is finding millions of cubic yards of fill material that will be clean enough to meet the requirements laid down by the Department of Ecology, the PCHB, and the Supreme Court. Once found, the fill must be moved to Sea-Tac Airport, and that turns out to be not so simple, either.

Despite the Port's protests, the Supreme Court upheld a factual findings by the PCHB that fill material must be completely free of petroleum by-products - such as gasoline, Diesel fuel, oils, grease, & so on. This rules out a great amount of fill that might come from various sites, especially environmental clean-up sites. Also, the Court said, the fill must not come from sites known to be contaminated. That rules out many more sites.

After legal fill materials are found, they need to be moved to the site. The usual truck-trailer dump-truck combinations can haul up to 22 cubic yards per trip (up to 33 tons). Loads of this size are pushing it, especially when one needs to prevent spillage. RCAA estimates the actual average load at closer to 18 cubic yards (27 tons).

Imagine 22 Million Tons of Fill Moving by Truck

The Port now hopes to complete the runway project in 2007 or 2008. This means that the Port needs about 15 million additional cubic yards (or 22 million tons) of fill over the next four to five years. However one runs the numbers, the result is hundreds upon hundreds of truck trips per day. In just the next two years, the Port hopes to move in six million cubic yards of fill, in a period of 654 working days. That is 9174 cubic yards per day (or 417-510 truckloads per day) on average.

One published Port estimate calls for more than seven hundred trips a day. Trucks will be moving to & from gravel pits all up & down Puget Sound, most of them far removed from the Airport. In-bound, these trucks must all feed into south-bound SR 509, to reach the dedicated exit for the construction site, at So. 172nd. Most of these trucks will be clogging I-5 or I-405, or both, depending on their points of origination. What this will do to the existing traffic problems in & around SouthCenter, and the I-5/I-405 interchange in Renton, remains to be seen. The likelihood is that the contractor will fall behind in the delivery schedule during Summer & Fall 2004, & then will try to cram a huge amount of trucks onto the roads when the construction season begins in Spring 2005.

Enough Trucks? Enough Drivers?

Observers also note that the Port's contractors are faced with a potential shortage of suitable trucks - and drivers. Despite the slow recovery from the post-dot.com recession, construction activity in the Central Puget Sound has continued at a very rapid pace, & most major construction involves fill. Anyone out on the highways & by-ways in this Summer of busy construction activity will see the haul rigs from many firms already hard at work, at many sites. How many additional truck-trailer rigs are actually available now?  How many qualified (union) drivers will actually be available for the next two years? Is the Teamsters' hiring hall filled with out-of-work drivers? Will the contractors have to bring in rigs & crews from out-of-State? Are there surplus rigs & drivers in other parts of the country? Probably not, for most of the rest of the country is ahead of the Pacific Northwest in getting back to normal business levels.

Longer & Longer Trips; Slower & Slower Delivery

For that matter, how much fill is available? Inevitably, the problem of availability of rigs & drivers is compounded by the problem of legal fill. The most abundant sources of clean fill are far removed from Sea-Tac, so Airport Communities Coalition sources suggest that the Port will be lucky if each rig can make two round trips per day. At some point, as near-by fill sources are exhausted, they may be able only to make one trip a day unless the Port is willing to pay serious overtime (and at some point, Federal restrictions on drivers' hours of operation will kick in, requiring TWO drivers per rig!).

In very late June, the Port resumed some minor construction activity in the third-runway construction zone, but as of this time, our understanding is that the Port has not resumed hauling of fill for the actual runway embankment. The Port's report to the Department of Ecology for fill-haul activity for June shows that only 15,713 cubic yard of fill were delivered.

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