For four months beginning in May, a portion of the 200,000 commercial passengers that annually pass through the St. George Regional Airport will have to make other arrangements. The airport will close from May 29 through Sept. 26 to allow crews to rip up and rebuild a runway undermined by unstable soil conditions.
St. George Regional Airport manager Rich Stehmeier calls the $25.8 million reconstruction project the “Big Fix.” The project will be mostly paid for with Federal Aviation Administration and federal infrastructure funds. The airport handles Delta, United and American flights to Phoenix, Denver, Los Angeles and Salt Lake City.
Plans call for digging 17 feet beneath the more than 1-mile-long runway to remove blue clay and install more stable material. Approximately 5,400 linear feet of runway will need to be excavated and replaced as a result of water entering the soil beneath it and damaging the existing runway pavement, creating the need for continual patching.
“We’d love it to be faster but we can’t be telling our airline partners you can sell tickets and then not meet it,” St. George Mayor Jon Pike said, explaining that the city, which owns the airport, consulted with contractors to determine how long the project would take.
St. George Public Works Director Cameron Cutler said the runway was originally built to design standards and complied with all FAA guidelines but water entering the soil underneath has nonetheless caused issues. He said this time around, engineers are working to avoid that problem entirely in the future.
“They’re putting some protective measures in place and going outside the runway to put a barrier to be able stop that water from getting down into the soils,” Cutler said.
During the closure, the city will also take the opportunity to upgrade the airport’s facilities inside the terminal and expand the parking area.
“This is a big deal, but we’ve known it was coming,” Pike said, explaining that all of the airlines operating at the airport have been aware that large-scale repairs will be necessary at some point. The project’s May-to-September schedule was chosen to coincide with the time of year when flights in and out of St. George are less frequently booked.