Three public hearings will be held this week to solicit public comment on the environmental impact of the massive O’Hare expansion project.
Elk Grove Village, one of the last remaining battlefronts in the decades-old war over O’Hare expansion, is the venue of the first hearing Tuesday.
For Elk Grove Mayor Craig Johnson, who will lead a rally against airport expansion, this is perhaps Custer’s Last Stand.
“By now it’s clear that all the promises made by Mayor Daley aren’t coming true,” Johnson said. “Our hope is that the FAA sees the light.”
The familiar rhetoric expected from the Chicago Department of Aviation, the anti-expansion/pro-Peotone Suburban O’Hare Commission and others testifying at the FAA hearings will not change the outcome.
FAA approval of O’Hare expansion appears inevitable.
But completing what would be the largest public-works project in Chicago history is far from a done deal.
Fair-minded aviation experts disagree whether the Daley administration’s plan would actually add enough flight capacity and how the city and the financially struggling airlines would pay the project’s bill.
United Airlines received court approval last week to reduce its obligation to pay off
$450 million in O’Hare bonds used to finance 10-year-old passenger terminal improvements at the airport. Will United, which has again delayed its planned re-emergence from bankruptcy, still be around to honor its pledge to back more bonds for O’Hare expansion?
In addition, a new FAA study confirms that the O’Hare project would cost more than $14 billion, not the $6.6 billion figure that city officials have long claimed.
For now, Chicago officials and O’Hare supporters are optimistic that the expansion plan is gliding toward a smooth landing.
Those who are trying to block new runways say they are equally confident that the plan is dead. They say it is a victim of exorbitant costs and an unattainable goal of adding up to 600,000 more flights a year at O’Hare while reducing flight delays 79 percent.
Judges will ultimately decide what happens, the critics say, regardless of any FAA imprimatur.
“I’m more optimistic than ever that once the courts examine how the FAA has cooked the books in Chicago’s favor, this project will die,” Bensenville Mayor John Geils said.
