Letters

Airport, pro and con

I am constantly vexed — and flat out angered — by the statement on the St. Petersburg Times' masthead, "The policy of our paper is simple — merely to tell the truth." In the ongoing debate over the future of St. Petersburg's historic Albert Whitted Airport, the Times has told only the truth it wants to tell.

Enter the Weekly Planet and Eric Snider. Eric's detailed, balanced and well-composed article should be required reading for St. Petersburg voters who have been assaulted by the efforts of pro-park lobbyists with questionable motives.

Thanks to the Planet's St. Petersburg Times alumni, yourself included, for presenting an honest, clear view on the issue. Too bad it had to come from out of town.

—Lum Pennington
St. Petersburg

What a great piece of reporting! You have done your homework and it shows! It is really an issue of simple math, but that is not what is getting reported by the other news media.

I really hope and pray these facts and "the rest of the story" somehow reach a larger audience than is seen by the Weekly Planet. But, with newspapers and television stations sleeping together, who's out there to show the other side of issues that neither the papers nor the TV stations want people to hear the facts on? I am worried that the "writing is on the wall" with this issue.

By the way, I'm a pilot who has no ties to Albert Whitted.

—Craig Yancey
Wesley Chapel

I've just finished reading your pro-Albert Whitted editorial and wanted to point out just one of multiple inconsistencies and errors in your piece. You list the presence of a sewage plant on the property as "problem number one" why a park wouldn't work on airport land.

I'd encourage you to open up a map of St. Petersburg. Spend a minute locating St Petersburg's three other sewage treatment plants, and you'll see that they're all located in or adjacent to parks.

Over the last hundred years St. Petersburg has seen the manner in which Tampa treats its downtown waterfront. No thanks.

—Chris Kelly
St. Petersburg

The voters of St. Petersburg face an important question this November, and it's important that they have the information they'll need to evaluate the options that face our community. Unfortunately, the editorial by Eric Snider perpetuated some of the myths about Albert Whitted that obscure the reality of what it truly costs our city. We don't need science fiction stories about NASA turning an obsolete facility into a space age interstate; we need facts.

Let's examine the claim that "the airport also will be a crucial asset if a major hurricane rampages through the area." The airport, as stated later in the piece, lies in the primary flood zone. If a major hurricane hits St. Petersburg, storm surges will cover the airport in the earliest stages. The runways will be underwater. Far from being a "crucial asset," Whitted will be merely a good place to sort through flood debris to find your washed-away possessions.

Snider further claims, even though the evidence suggests the opposite, that creating a new park will require moving the sewage treatment plant. There are four treatment plants in St. Petersburg. One of these is on the Albert Whitted peninsula. The other three are located next to, or within, parks. As far as the people of this city are concerned, parks are an excellent way to mitigate the effects of a treatment plant and this one should prove no exception.

The piece does hit on one of the reasons to close the airport, but ironically it is portrayed as a reason to keep it: "Albert Whitted's ground is polluted, too." The impacts of airports on the health of children are so severe that the National Parents and Teachers Association (PTA) passed a resolution in 1999 that children should be protected from their harmful effects. The pollution doesn't only date from WWII, as the writer implies; every day that Albert Whitted Airport operates, it is adding toxins to the air and water of St. Petersburg. Lead, for example. According to the EPA, the largest still-existing use of "leaded" gasoline is in aviation gasoline for general aviation (piston-engine) aircraft.

This piece completely overlooked the destructive effects that Whitted Airport has on the surrounding neighborhoods. Because of airport-imposed height restrictions, USF and Bayfront Medical Center, both of which contribute far more to St Pete's economy than the airport could ever hope to, cannot expand upwards when they need more facilities. They are forced to expand into nearby neighborhoods, and communities are destroyed in the process. Roser Park, for example, has lost half of its historic homes to the wrecker's ball.

The airport is a barrier that isolates the neighborhoods south of the downtown area, and cuts them off from the renaissance that the rest of the central city is experiencing. Shouldn't these communities share in St. Petersburg's rebirth?

Finally, I'd like to turn the question around: If there was a park on the site, would the Weekly Planet advocate turning it into an airport?

—Randall Luttenberg
St. Petersburg

This article appears in Oct 23-28, 2003.