Airport attorney agree on need for environmental study

Thursday, July 22, 1999 | 5:39 a.m.

Airport attorneys say the U.S. Postal Service will need to conduct an environmental study before the facility can open. And that could jeopardize the planned Aug. 28 startup date.

People who live near the airport don't want the hub because it not only will add new flights in and out of the airport, but will mean planes leaving early in the morning. Some will be noisier Boeing 727s.

The hub operator would have seven planes taking off five nights a week between 12:30 a.m. and 2 a.m.

Postal service lawyers say they're doing their own legal analysis of their agency's obligation under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, and probably will have an answer on Friday.

Airport neighbors have been angry since the airport authority and the postal service first sat down together in April and agreed the hub would move from Oakland, Calif., into a temporary facility at Reno. The airport authority plans to build the postal service a permanent hub in three years.

"They will not operate here if our attorneys don't feel comfortable that they have complied with NEPA," airport authority Executive Director Krys Bart told the Reno Gazette-Journal by telephone from Washington, D.C..

She traveled to the nation's capital earlier this week to meet face-to-face with postal officials and ask whether they agree they have to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act and, if so, whether they are complying with it. Her earlier requests for this information, both verbally and in writing, were ignored, she said.

Bart still doesn't have an answer.

"I'm being aggressive with them because I want to know now," she said. "I've got to go to my board and make some recommendations.

"I do not feel comfortable with the fact they're not forthcoming with this information."

Federal courts have ruled that because the postal service is a federal agency, it must follow the environmental law. However, the agency never has followed the act when setting up other air-cargo sorting hubs around the country, airport lawyers said.