La Guardia Airport is one step closer to getting a new waste-transfer facility that will attract the type of birds that cause plane crashes, opponents warned yesterday.
“If you have one catastrophic bird strike where people died, people are going to stop coming” to La Guardia, said Ken Paskar, whose nonprofit, Friends of La Guardia Airport, lost a court fight yesterday to halt the nearly $200 million project.
“Bird strikes happen all the time” near the airport — normally without catastrophe. But “all it takes is one” to cause a major loss of life, added Paskar, who is mulling several new legal efforts to overturn the decision and stop the project.
Paskar complains that the North Shore Marine Transfer Station will attract birds looking for food.
The facility is being built in College Point, about 2,200 feet across Flushing Bay from Runway 31.
In 2010, the FAA said in a letter that the facility posed no danger. Paskar’s group had asked the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals to possibly overturn that finding.
The judges ruled yesterday that they lacked jurisdiction to rule on the letter, and dismissed the case.
A Canada goose crippled US Airways Flight 1549 on takeoff from La Guardia on Jan. 15, 2009.
Capt. Chesley Sullenberger miraculously crash- landed that plane in the Hudson River without any fatalities.
Sullenberger last night told The Post the appeals court’s ruling was “disappointing,” and he ripped the proposed location of the facility as “a terrible idea.”
“It certainly makes [a catastrophic bird strike] somewhat more likely, and we should have the integrity, quite frankly, to do what’s in the best interest of the public,” Sullenberg said. “We know better, and apparently we’re choosing to do this anyway, and hoping for the best.”
“We feel the Court reached the correct decision. As it found, the plaintiffs could not challenge the US Transportation Secretary’s letter endorsing the blue-ribbon panel’s findings that the proposed facility will be compatible with aviation safety. The North Shore Marine Transfer Station is an integral part of the City’s long term Comprehensive Solid Waste Management Plan,” a city lawyer told The Post.
The FAA said it is reviewing the decision.