Daily Corinthian • Tuesday, February 28, 2012 • 5
State Briefs Runway construction halted at Jackson airport JACKSON — Mississippi’s busiest passenger airport is down to one usable runway because a $13.3 million construction project is at a standstill, already eight months behind schedule. Completion of runway surfacing at Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport was expected in June 2011, but a dispute with the contractor has halted the work. Airport CEO Dirk Vanderleest said the contract with Rifenburg Construction Inc. of Durham, N.C., was terminated and is in arbitration over the quality of asphalt the company was using. Vanderleest said a request for bids is planned in April to complete the job. Rifenburg attorney Mark Herbert said the airport used quality tests not covered in the contract. He said Rifenburg wanted arbitration so an independent party could determine whether the asphalt met contractual standards. The closed runway has caused air traffic controllers to launch departures between arrivals instead of using one runway for planes coming in and the other for departing aircraft, said Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Arlene Salac.
“This situation causes a more complex operation, but FAA controllers are trained to accommodate these types of challenges and the operation remains safe,” Salac said. Another challenge is that the open runway has what is known as an ILS, an instrument landing system for poor weather conditions, only in one direction and a global positioning system must be used for planes landing from the other direction. Both systems help guide pilots, but some older commercial aircraft are only equipped with the ILS system, and can’t use the GPS approach. Vanderleest said there was one occasion in which a Southwest Airlines flight was diverted to New Orleans because of that, though the flight later returned to Jackson. Southwest did not immediately respond to a message. Other major airlines — Delta and American — said the closed runway has not caused major problems for them so far. The construction shutdown is having an impact on taxpayers. One of Mississippi’s key Air National Guard units is based at the end of the closed runway, and pilots must taxi further in massive C-17 Globemasters, burning extra fuel. Guard officials said the added cost is relatively small because getting
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the big planes moving is what burns up large quantities of fuel, not keeping them rolling down the taxiway. Vanderleest said the closed runway has been “more of an inconvenience than a problem,” but he said its needs to be completed as soon as possible. The other runway needs resurfacing as well, but that can’t be done until the first one is finished. He said the last overlay project was done in the 1990s and the life cycle of a runway is usually 10-15 years.
Lafayette looking at alternative fuels OXFORD — Lafayette County will take a look at switching to alternative fuels for some of its vehicles. The Oxford Eagle reports that Supervisor Mike Pickens asked County Administrator Joseph Johnson to find out the cost of such a fuel-conversion project. Pickens also wants the county working with the University of Mississippi and city of Oxford in a joint plan to use natural gas. Pickens says natural gas would cost about a third of what the county is paying for gasoline now. “We have a surplus of natural gas in this country and all the things that the politicians talk about what we need to
do, we can do here locally,” he said. Oxford Mayor Pat Patterson said the city has also considered alternative fuels but has not yet decided to move forward. Patterson said the Oxford Police Department had considered changing to natural gas last year, but the issue of having less space in the smaller cars was a problem.
AmeriCorps expects 166 in Vicksburg VICKSBURG — AmeriCorps is welcoming 166 volunteers to Vicksburg. Erika Roberts, a spokeswoman for the AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps Southern Region, tells the Vicksburg Post reports the new members arrive Monday to join 29 team leaders from 16 states who began their service Jan. 30 and 72 others already in the field. That brings the total of NCCC members at the Southern Region campus to 238. AmeriCorps participants mentor children, clean up parks or buildings and weatherize homes for the poor among other activities. Some get a living stipend while they are working for up to a year. The Vicksburg campus opened in 2009 on the
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grounds of the former All Saints’ Episcopal School. It is one of five regional bases in the country.
Groups say deal reached in lawsuit JACKSON — A proposed settlement of a lawsuit would prohibit minors in Mississippi from being held in solitary confinement and would require corrections officials to move youth out of a privately run prison where there were allegations of sexual and physical abuse. The 2010 lawsuit claimed that some guards at Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility smuggled drugs into the prison, had sex with some inmates, assaulted others and put some in solitary confinement. The lawsuit was filed in November 2010 by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the American Civil Liberties Union and Jackson attorney Robert McDuff, It also claimed inmates weren’t given proper medical care or educational opportunities, among other things. Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility opened in 2001 in Leake County and holds inmates ages 13-22 who were minors convicted as adults. It’s operated by GEO Group Inc., the second largest private prison company in the country.
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