Small Airports vs. Tall Trees…
Trees have a lot to offer — shade, beauty, they even help to clean polluted air — but as more and more small GA airports struggle to survive the encroachments of neighborhoods and development, some pilots find even the trees can become their enemy. In San Jose, Calif., pilots at Reid-Hillview Airport are fighting a local regulation that requires developers at a mall to plant 100 trees, which will reach 60 to 80 feet high when fully grown, in a parking lot directly across the street from the airport. “[We] will not allow this project to proceed without a fight,” John Blair, an official with the pilots’ coalition, told the San Jose Business Journal. Blair says the developers have been willing to listen and tried to work with the pilots’ concerns, but city planners are taking a hard line and disregarding public safety, according to the Business Journal.
