AUSTIN (Talk1370.com) -- Plans for a new jet fuel facility on the west side of Austin-Bergstrom International Airport will proceed, after a resolution aiming to revisit the site selection process and environmental assessment for the project failed to pass the Austin City Council Thursday night.
A resolution put forward by District 2 council member Vanessa Fuentes would have called on city staff to identify three alternative locations for the expanded fuel facility for further consideration, and revisit the environmental assessment for the project. The motion failed on a 5-5 tie vote, with council member Natasha Harper-Madison off the dais.
The existing plan for the new fuel facility, which has already received all of its necessary environmental approvals, calls for two 1.5-million gallon tanks storing Jet-A fuel to be built on the west side of the airport property, next to US Highway 183 and to the south of State Highway 71. The site would be built on just over 10 acres.
Approximately two dozen residences are located within 2,000 feet of the proposed site, with one residence being just over 700 feet away. That distance prompted some concern from residents and environmental advocates about the potential health impacts of the tank farm.
A second phase of the plan would call for two additional fuel tanks to be built, which would locate two additional tanks on the site. That phase of the plan, currently estimated for the next 10-15 years, would put tanks even closer to the existing residences, some potentially less than 500 feet.
“My concerns lie with my community who live so closely to the airport, wanting to ensure that the process in which the fuel site location was conducted is one that is done with equity in mind and one that is thorough and communicative in a culturally responsive way,” said Fuentes during a Tuesday work session.
Fuentes and other speakers during Thursday's meeting called the project another potential example of the City's history of environmental racism - with many drawing connections between the proposed fuel facility and a 52-acre East Austin petroleum tank farm with a long history of issues that was finally shut down in the 1990s.
Right now, AUS is operating on the original fuel storage facility built when the airport first opened in 1999, just 1,500 feet from the Barbara Jordan Terminal. The airport currently can store between 1 and 2 days' worth of its fuel needs on-site, compared to the industry standard of 5-7 days.
Because the existing plan has already been through its environmental and other approval processes, construction is ready to begin - which is expected to take between 18-24 months. Airport officials said any reconsideration of the site would reset the clock on the entire project, potentially adding another two to three years' delay to the project, and would likely have detrimental effects on the continued record-setting growth that AUS continues to see.
According to a memo from airport officials, a third-party consultant analyzed 12 different locations within the perimeter of the airport property and found that the proposed site is the only viable location, once all the requirements and other considerations of other expansion plans on the airport property are taken into account.
Austin Fire Department officials told council members that no fuel spills have been reported within the current fuel storage area, only minor leaks that have been held by the storage area's concrete containment pool.
