Board selects relocation site for Rexburg-Madison Airport

REXBURG — Plans for moving the Rexburg-Madison County Airport are being discussed again, but now airport officials are more serious about the relocation than ever before.

“It’s only really starting to get traction because of some of the growth that Rexburg is experiencing now,” GDA Engineers Aviation Planner Rick Patton said. “The airport is one of those components that needs to grow with the town.”

On Wednesday, the Rexburg-Madison County Airport Board held its fourth public meeting about the relocation site. Patton announced the selection of a site for the relocation of the airport on U.S. Bureau of Land Management property west of Rexburg. He said the plan is for it to be on a lava flow site about six miles from the city near Beaver Dick Park.

GDA Engineers, a civil engineering and surveying solutions company out of Wyoming, have been working on a master plan for the relocation for the last year and a half.

“What the master plan does is it takes a look at all the different alternatives all the way through,” Patton said.

He said the current airport’s site is considered constrained, and the short runway is paved as far as it can go. There’s no room for needed expansion.

“It’s got a river to the north, we’ve got the major state highway to the west. The road that goes into town, which is Main Street, is also a state highway. To the east there’s a golf course,” Patton said.

Patton said the company looked at the Rexburg area as a whole to narrow down land options for the airport move. He said 12 different areas were assessed before one was finally selected.

“Of those dozen, there was three of them that really popped up to the top,” Patton said.

Engineers were looking at a site north of town on the county line, but the there was a lot of infrastructure that would have to be displaced, or relocated. Another site southeast of town was a possibility, but the weather patterns and elevation in that area posed a potential problem to the airport.

Patton said engineers decided on the site west of town because there would be minimal environmental disturbance in the area, and local governments wouldn’t have to purchase farmland.

“The other thing that made this site really nice is that it’s lower, so the weather patterns in that area are better,” Patton said.

Now that the location is decided, further environmental assessments need to be made. Engineers want to make sure they aren’t displacing a rare breed of animal, such as sage grouse. The full assessment could take a year or more.

“The biggest hurdles we are going to have at the new site, or any site, would be the environmental concerns,” Patton said. “We’re going to be looking pretty hard at the disturbances we’d have to the natural environment.”

Discussion about moving the airport aren’t new in Rexburg. Studies for airport relocation date back to 1991, Rexburg Economic Development Director Scott Johnson said.

He said recently the Federal Aviation Association has been encouraging the city to look at the possibility of relocation to meet airport standards.

“The current airport isn’t large enough to handle even some of the current flights that are coming in. The runway is too short, the (airport) apron is too close in some areas,” Johnson said.

He said the airport isn’t deemed unsafe, but it needs to be more expandable.

“At the current airport, it will be business as usual while we’re going through this process,” Johnson said.

Ninety percent of the project will be funded through the FAA’s Airport Improvement plan. The other 10 percent will be made up through state grants and local tax dollars.

“The FAA portion will fund improvements to the runway, taxiway, apron area, for land acquisition, and all the different studies that go along with it,” Patton said.

Patton wants to remind patrons that this is the continuation of a general aviation airport, not the building of another commercial service or airline.

Officials and engineers said the process to move the airport is extensive and may not be finalized for at least another decade.