D  e  s  e  r  t     E  x  p  o  s  u  r  e     May 2005

Flight or Fight

Is building a $3 million airport on scenic Whitewater Mesa, near the Catwalk in Glenwood, an economic boon or an eyesore-making boondoggle? The question pits the county's establishment against newcomers in a bitter and increasingly personal clash of cultures.

Story and photos by David A. Fryxell

Your ears pop as the switchback road climbs 2,000 feet into the sky, a brilliant blue dome dotted with white powder-puffs of cloud lashed by the spring wind. Soon, the spot where you left US 180, north of Glenwood, NM, population 550, lies far below. If you continue climbing on route 159, where the road becomes a single, snaking lane, eventually you'd arrive at the mining ghost town of Mogollon, population 11. In the middle, the crest between these two climbs signaled by the metallic thump of a cattle guard, the rugged expanse of Whitewater Mesa stretches like the bottom of a bowl, tree-spattered mountains rising on all sides. White patches of snow stand out against the upper crags of the mountains' gray like teeth.

Cordelia Rose's horse prances on her property north of Glenwood. On a nearby stretch of Whitewater Mesa, developers envision a busy airstrip.

Only a handful of houses and a few fence posts punctuate the flatness of the mesa itself. Follow Whitewater Mesa straight out past its northeastern perimeter and you'd fly over the Catwalk, the spectacular canyon passageway that is this area's chief tourist attraction.

Soon, in the vision of Catron County commissioners and some long-time residents, a steady thrum of airplanes will join the hawks in taking off and landing at Whitewater Mesa. Nearly $3 million, mostly a windfall of federal aviation funds, will replace the mesa's scraggly, seldom-used 3,500-foot dirt airstrip with a state-of-the-art, 4,800-foot paved runway complete with lights, signs, parking, electricity and fences. The construction and availability of commuting by air will spark a development boom in this economically hard-pressed region—at least that's the dream. Like the ballpark in Field of Dreams, airport backers believe that if you build it, they—people with money, people with jobs, the right kind of people—will come.

After years of controversy and study and nearly $138,000 in grant expenditures, it's a dream that took one giant step closer to reality in February: An Airport Master Plan for the Glenwood-Catron County Airport, 88 pages plus appendices, was completed by an outside consulting firm and submitted to the county commission and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The plan offers three alternatives, priced from $2.8 million to $3 million, for replacing the current airstrip, which sits on National Forest land by dint of a special-use permit. All three options involve the purchase of acreage from private landowners, primarily one of the airport's original proponents; two alternatives would also use additional forest land, up to 69 acres.

But when Mike and Cordelia Rose came to Whitewater Mesa, first as part-time residents in 2000 and now full-time, it wasn't for the promise of seeing an airport out the wall of windows fronting their low-slung brick home. They imagined building labyrinths with stones gathered from the nearby mountainsides and holding star-gazing parties under some of the darkest skies in North America. Before retirement, he'd been an academic and she was the registrar at the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt museum in Manhattan, one of America's most chi-chi outposts of design and style. They lived within neon glare of Times Square—though in a previous life they'd also lived in a mud hut in Kenya, so Catron County wasn't exactly roughing it for them.

Since the Roses became leaders in People Against Big Airport (PABA), a grassroots group that claims nearly 500 airport opponents in Catron County and as far away as England, she says she's been spat at and given the finger. She can no longer ride her white horse across her neighbor's land—that would be Vernon Hollimon, a private pilot and one of the main proponents of the airport. Darrel Allred, another prime airport backer and owner of Glenwood Realty, has told the Roses he wishes he'd never sold them their house on Whitewater Mesa.

If you were casting a movie about the Glenwood airport controversy, it would be hard to find more dramatic opposites than the Roses and their friends, many of them also recent arrivals, on one side, and ranchers whose Catron County roots go back generations on the other. As first logging and then ranching have dwindled, the county's economic base has eroded the way Whitewater Creek cut the Catwalk's spectacular canyon deep into bedrock. Newcomers from what ranchers dismissively label "populated areas" have arrived, many of them retired or with sources of income that don't depend on the land. The newcomers have brought with them different values, different priorities. They look at the landscape as a place to get away from it all. They see the great outdoors is a vista—not as a resource from which to eke out a hard-scrabble living, the way folks have here for more than 125 years.

"I do feel sorry that the ranchers here have to sell off 10 acres to the likes of us," Cordelia Rose says in her soft English accent. "We want a certain lifestyle, remoteness and beauty."

"They want life to go on as it always has," says Mike Rose of airport backers, "and somehow make it so that a 'free' airport can help them keep their lifestyle."

Hugh B. McKeen, a county commissioner and third-generation Catron County rancher, grumbles, "Sometimes I think that new people from populated areas should be given a set of rules about how to live the rural life: Number one, this life is great, don't change what's already here, and number two, some people from populated areas have all the answers; others simply live and let live and are welcomed by all."

As much of Southwest New Mexico undergoes a sometimes-painful transition from a life based on the land—logging, ranching, mining—to a haven for sun-seeking retirees and a home for artists, healers and refugees from "populated areas," the battle over Glenwood's airport could be read as a microcosm of the cultural clashes ahead for the region as a whole.

As Stan Russell, a former El Paso newspaperman who's been here three years and edits PABA's newsletter, puts it, "Catron County is very small and everybody knows everybody. Everything gets condensed here. Any bumps show real quick."

Past "bumps" in this isolated, scenic but sparsely populated slice of Southwest New Mexico have included the recent Kit Laney grazing-rights battle (see the May 2004 Desert Exposure) and opposition to wolf reintroduction, which McKeen calls "the single biggest economic impact on Catron County." The county has at various times proclaimed that its sheriff's authority supersedes that of federal law enforcement and passed an ordinance requiring residents to own guns. Unlike previous dustups, however, this fight involves nearly $3 million in federal aviation funds.

Mike Rose notes another difference: "The dichotomy here is newcomers and old-timers, which is not exactly the same as ranchers versus environmentalists. Newcomers have a very different appreciation of the county than established folks do. Its great value and attraction for us is in its very remoteness."

Russell says of airport supporters, "They see PABA as nothing but wolf lovers. But we have ranchers and business people and diehard Republicans. They like to label us as against everything, as radical environmentalists."

In an extensive statement titled "Paving the Glenwood Airstrip—Let's find the right answer," McKeen writes, "We have lived through environmental groups and seen their anti-logging, anti-livestock deceptive methods. This deception put forth by anti-groups has destroyed the economic base of Catron County. . . . Enter PABA, another anti-group using the same old tried and true methods of deception to our citizens to further their objectives." Even PABA's name, he argues, aims to deceive, with its acronym for "Big Airport." "People are led to believe that this is going to be a megalopolis (BIG) airport."

McKeen's wife points out that most of the PABA activists have been in Catron County less than 10 years, many even less than that. She's coined a new acronym for them: Citizens Resisting All Progress—"CRAP," for short.

Her husband adds, "PABA has different values than the long-time residents of Catron County. Personally, I want to promote and make jobs to improve the economy of Catron County. I would like to see the young kids, including my own, have a future here and stay in the area. The least of my worries is to have an occasional noise from an airplane.

"Most people that move into our area are from populated areas and have a retirement or fixed income of some sort. They can be for zero progress and have no effect on their lives." PABA activists, he says, have threatened him on the phone, saying they won't vote for him in the next election if he approves the airstrip.

"It's a great thing for the county," McKeen insists. "It's hard to imagine anybody being against the simple paving of a strip."

In a previous term, McKeen voted for resolutions for Catron County to take control of all federal land and to empower the sheriff to arrest Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management officers. Yet even his opponents characterize him as gentler in style than some Catron County hard-liners, so much so that a High Country News reporter once told him he sounds like an environmentalist. Can't be, McKeen responded, "because environmentalists hate cows."

Yet McKeen singles out the Roses in particular for criticism, noting that they knew there was already an airstrip when they bought their property on Whitewater Mesa. For them to say, in effect, "I live here now, so the rest of you have to conform to my way of life," is, McKeen feels, "completely wrong and the bottom of the pit of being neighborly."

Airport proponent Darrel Allred, who sold the Roses that property to his regret, is a former state police officer whose father served in the state legislature. Allred has also been active in opposing wolf reintroduction and supporting ranchers' rights; he's occasionally written about local controversies for pro-property-rights, anti-environmentalist Web sites such as PropertyRightsResearch.org and The Westerner. His family has deep roots in Catron County, and he and various relatives own several Glenwood-area businesses. Allred did not respond to Desert Exposure's request for comments for this story.

Vernon Hollimon, who through his wife also declined to comment for this article, keeps a lower profile than Allred. But all three options presented in the airport master plan involve acquiring at least some of Hollimon's land on the mesa, ranging from 36 to 150 acres for totals from $118,000 to $466,000. At one point in the airport battle, one alternative called for purchasing a strip of Hollimon's land at $10,000 an acre, for a total of more than $1 million.

In the view of PABA activists, the airport advocates are so used to getting their way in tightly knit Catron County that they seldom even bother to make an appearance at public meetings about the project. Proponents supposedly figure they already have the county commission lined up to vote for the airport, so why bother?

Ryan Hayes, an airport planner with Armstrong Consulting in Grand Junction, Colo., which produced the Airport Master Plan, concedes that the opposition to the Glenwood proposal has been unusual for such a small airport. "They're a very vocal minority," he says, adding, "I hate to say that without any basis, but the fact is that a commissioner from Glenwood [McKeen] ran on a very pro-airport position last year and was elected. The opponents are very well organized, though."

Cordelia Rose walks against the wind along the dirt-and-tumbleweeds airstrip gouged across Whitewater Mesa, looking a bit out of place in a sleeveless pink top and stylish black pants. The breeze flattens her short hair against her head and stiffens the windsock behind her. The windsock is pink, a paler shade than her blouse, and the only sign that this 60-by-3,500 strip of dirt is an airport runway rather than a road to nowhere. In the distance, mountains march from gray to blue until they almost fade into the sky—which is utterly bereft of airplanes of any sort.

Admittedly, at first glance the notion of spending millions of dollars to replace this remote stretch of dirt with a full-fledged airport seems nonsensical. But that's because you don't understand the Federal Aviation Administration and its National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems (NPIAS). The plan identifies more than 3,300 airports that are "significant to national air transportation and thus eligible to receive Federal grants under the Airport Improvement Program (AIP)," according to the FAA. "It also includes estimates of the amount of AIP money needed to fund infrastructure development projects that will bring these airports up to current design standards and add capacity to congested airports."

"The FAA has had a mandate to replace surface travel with ground travel," says Rose, who has knocked on government doors in Washington, DC, and Fort Worth to express PABA's opposition to the Glenwood plan. "So they're happy to have these studies done."

The NPIAS covers all commercial service airports (seven in New Mexico), all reliever airports and selected general aviation airports. The latter two categories number 45 airports in New Mexico alone, ranging from the Double Eagle II in Albuquerque with a projected 260 based aircraft in 2009 to the Shiprock Airstrip, with zero based aircraft but nonetheless $372,382 penciled in to bring it up to snuff. Two New Mexico airports, in Magdalena and Glenwood, as yet have "$0" under "2005-2009 Development Costs" in the latest NPIAS report. (Other area airports, with 2009 projections, include Grant County, 24 based aircraft, $4.3 million; Las Cruces, 111, $3.3 million; Deming, 30, $2.2 million; Lordsburg, 7, $1.5 million; T or C, 33, $2.7 million; Socorro, 16, $1.6 million. Also in Catron County is the airport in Reserve, with 1 airplane, $833,334.)

Getting on that list for federal aviation largesse, which will next be updated for Congress in 2006, is the ultimate point of the Glenwood Airport Master Plan. Funds for this vast array of projected airport upgrades come from various aviation-related fees, not general tax dollars—$39.5 billion in the latest NPIAS report. The FAA's mission to further link the nation by air extends even to the dinkiest airports with no scheduled air service. These general aviation airports typically require at least 10 locally based aircraft to qualify and must be at least 20 miles from another NPIAS airport. According to the FAA, they tend to be "distributed on a one-per-county basis in rural areas and are often located near the county seat"—which in the case of Catron County would be Reserve, 22 air miles from Whitewater Mesa. But "the activity criterion may be relaxed for remote locations or other mitigating circumstances."

Mike Saupp, a Forth Worth-based FAA airport-development official whose territory includes New Mexico, refused to talk to Desert Exposure about the NPIAS process or the Glenwood airport. He referred all questions to an FAA spokesman in Oklahoma City, who did not return Desert Exposure's call.

According to Hayes of Armstrong Consulting, the FAA looks at two primary factors when weighing funding once an airport is designated an NPIAS facility: "One, if the demand exceeds the capacity of the airport. And, two, if the airport doesn't meet certain designated standard criteria, such as length, width, object-free areas. Both of these are the case in Glenwood. There's no paved runway at all, which is a big safety factor."

The notion that Glenwood's dirt airstrip might be eligible for federal funding first bubbled up, by most accounts, in the late 1990s; Allred says the original idea came from USFS District Ranger John Baldwin. Allred and Hollimon, who'd met representatives of Armstrong Consulting at an aviation confab, came up with a proposal to seek federal funding for a site-selection study. The county commission went along, and pretty soon the FAA had granted $70,667 for Armstrong's experts to look at Catron County's aviation needs.

Armstrong examined three sites for a possible airport upgrade: Whitewater Mesa, Stout Mesa and the existing county airstrip in Reserve, which would have been the cheapest option at $1.9 million in the short term. But the Reserve option was discounted from the get-go, according to Cordelia Rose, in favor of Whitewater Mesa, where Hollimon owns land and has already built his own private dirt airstrip. (Armstrong cites "aeronautical reasons" for dismissing Reserve.)

The mesa plan twice seemed derailed, however, when the FAA abruptly suspended funding over the demand numbers and over PABA's criticisms of some of the consultants' data as "inflated or unjustified." Airport advocates appealed to the office of Sen. Jeff Bingaman, who wrote to the FAA and got the project revived. A new version from the consultants introduced the idea of a 5,000-foot runway entirely on 103 acres of Hollimon's land, to be purchased at $10,000 an acre. (PABA claims the going rate in Catron County is more like $2,000 an acre; the current master plan calls for prices of $2,000-$4,000.)

"We squashed that one," says Rose.

"But every time the airport seems dead and people in the community back off," adds Russell, "it raises its head again. It just seems unkillable."

Sure enough, "Draft Working Paper 3" emerged in December 2004, which led to release of the official master plan on Feb. 21, 2005. That contained three alternatives deemed "feasible and prudent" for 4,800-by-75 paved runways, each with an estimated price tag:

A. Realign, extend and pave the existing runway, using US Forest Service and private land, $3 million

B. Construct a runway immediately north on private land, $2.8 million

C. Construct a runway shifted north 2,900 feet from the existing runway end, using USFS and private land, $2.8 million.

McKeen of the county commission seems to favor option B, in part because all the money for land purchase would go to Catron County taxpayers—technically, one taxpayer—rather than to the US Forest Service. He says, "Forest Service money all goes to San Francisco, and none is spent in the county."

He dismisses concerns that this would be a windfall for Hollimon: "Wealth is measured by what you own. If a person sells his land for money, there is no increase in wealth. It is just a trade, one asset for another. . . . My experience with this type of appraisal, especially bare land, [is] that the price is always lower than the actual market price."

If the county commission votes to go ahead, the next step in developing the airport would be either an environmental assessment or a more rigorous environmental impact statement. "That's up to the FAA," says Hayes, who adds, "I'd predict the county plans to at least get this studied through the environmental process. Then the critical decision is whether to apply for grant funding for construction."

Throughout the fractious process leading up to the release of the master plan, even the degree and form of public involvement have been controversial. "We wanted the process to be as open as possible," says Hayes of Armstrong Consulting, citing the formation of a Public Advisory Committee (PAC) and public meetings held early this year in Glenwood and Datil.

But Cordelia Rose, who represents PABA on the advisory committee, says the public got a say only because PABA pressured the consultants and the county commission. "Armstrong Consulting did everything they could to eliminate public participation," she maintains.

At the first public meeting, in Glenwood, which attracted about 75 people, PABA's Russell says, "It was obvious they wanted to hold down public comments. They said they would take written questions only, and no comments. People grumbled. There was a lot of intimidation, both vocal and physical, between ranchers and people opposed to the airport, so people were not really willing to speak up."

The next night's meeting, in Datil in the northern part of the county, was more dramatic. About 60 people attended, but opponents were more strident—voicing a whole new line of attack on the airport proposal, seeing it as evidence of continuing neglect of northern Catron County. Then the power went out. "It was 20 degrees outside," says Russell, "and people were yelling and screaming in this cold, dark room lit only by Coleman lanterns."

Questions at the Datil meeting took on an edge: "Why can’t this issue be put on a referendum and voted upon?" "Why are we expected to build an airport when the county cannot provide us with a decent jail?" "How can the county justify this when we have no funds for EMT?" "Is there a conflict of interest when the two people who started this are developers who stand to profit from the development of the airport?" "How are the three commissioners profiting from this airport?" "When did Catron County become a dictatorship?"

"Nothing is beyond PABA," McKeen complains. "They will attempt to split the county for their little cause."

About the same time, Armstrong Consulting also circulated a survey to collect public input on the airport proposal—after, according to PABA, removing from the original draft the option to check no support for the airport at all. Question eight now offered only a choice between supporting a paved runway using USFS land and supporting a paved runway on private land. "None of the above" was not an option.

Nonetheless, the 156 respondents (133 from within the county) found ways to register their disapproval of the airport plan. Among county residents, 92 percent said they would not support a tax increase for airport operation and maintenance, and 83 percent would not support the airport even if no tax increase were necessary. Six percent chose the USFS land option, 10 percent picked private land, and the rest said "no" by omission.

None of these statistics made it into the Airport Master Plan, however. Results of the survey were relegated to two-thirds of a page at the end, an Appendix G. The closest the report came to acknowledging the public input was a single sentence: "The majority of survey respondents suggested that the airport not be improved at all, be closed or that the existing strip be paved." The report then added dismissively, "These comments also do not serve to aid in the development of a master plan for the airport that meets FAA design standards."

"They completely blew it off," says Cordelia Rose.

Besides cost issues, survey respondents cited light and noise pollution concerns. Despite McKeen's insistence on referring to the proposal as "a simple paving project," the master plan notes, "A standard rotating beacon should be installed which will meet the FAA standards. . . . It is possible that the rotating beacon can also be pilot controlled so that it is not operating 24 hours per day and may be angled and shielded to minimize light exposure."

"Airports are exempt from dark-skies rules," says Russell. "Armstrong Consulting says the lights would be on for only 15 minutes at a time, but that's more than enough. We've been trying to get this area designated as an astronomy park. You can see things from here with binoculars that you can't see with a telescope on Mount Lemmon. With even a little bit of light, astronomers won't come here."

McKeen counters, "I am led to believe that the night sky reason is just propaganda." Then he voices the usually unspoken threat that bubbles beneath the surface of this controversy: If PABA blocks the airport, maybe Hollimon will build a subdivision on his land that the "anti-groups" would like even less. McKeen says, "The choice is clear, should we have a dark runway with reflectors for landing, or the landowner subdividing and having 20 or 30 houses in the same area with uncontrolled lights? Which plan will affect the night sky more?"

As for noise, maybe the 65 decibels of an airplane taking off or landing might be acceptable in the city, PABA argues, but not in the "natural quiet" of Whitewater Mesa. The master plan recommends "a voluntary noise abatement program. . . publicized to all based and transient pilots" that would ask pilots to maintain a minimum 2,000-foot altitude above national park and wilderness areas.

McKeen says, "One would have to be outside to even remotely hear a plane take off. An FAA-built airstrip would have strict flight patterns away from populated areas."

PABA's concern, however, is not planes buzzing over downtown Glenwood—it's the addition of noise to a scenic stretch that's now largely noise-free. "The consultants' baseline is an urban environment," says Mike Rose. "Ours is no light and no sound."

Regardless of public opposition and concern over light and noise, ultimately the FAA will look at demand: How many planes would use a paved and expanded Glenwood airport? "It meets all demand criteria," says Hayes. "There's a misconception that because there are only eight or 10 based aircraft, this is not a good use of federal money. It's all money from dedicated sources, funded by aviation taxes. If it doesn't go to Glenwood, it will go to other airports in the state of New Mexico."

McKeen positions the project as a matter of safety: "Who could be against safety for pilots with the simple improvement of a piece of ground?" he asks. Local pilots wanted a paved runway the current length, he says, but 4,800 feet is the minimum the FAA will fund. "The PABA people never consulted with the pilots in Glenwood to see what their intentions were. Anti-groups don't consult with their adversaries because correct information will not gain them much public support."

With no tower and no operations records at the existing dirt strip on Whitewater Mesa, Hayes concedes, estimating pilot demand was "a tough call." The consultants relied in part on a survey distributed to local pilots and landowners to forecast what "unconstrained demand" would be. Currently, for instance, demand might be limited because a pilot's insurance carrier won't cover operations from an unpaved runway. Signed letters were required from those stating they would base a plane at the improved airport.

During the planning process, these aircraft estimates were hotly debated—and were cited by the FAA in its concerns over possibly "inflated or unjustified" numbers. PABA charged that early numbers included one aircraft owned by an ex-resident who'd moved to California three years before, plus two unregistered experimental ultralights. According to PABA, only three real planes are currently based at the airstrip. Statewide, 44 percent of general aviation airports have fewer than 10 based planes.

But the final report projects 13 based aircraft after the runway improvements, with 3,630 takeoffs and landings—a "conservative estimate." By 2025, estimates of based aircraft range from 14 to 18, with more than 5,000 takeoffs and landings ("operations"). At peak July daytime usage, that means almost three operations an hour from what's now the tranquil Whitewater Mesa.

Stan Russell looks out over the mesa, where the only motion this spring morning is the rattling progress of tumbleweeds. "As you can see, there are airplanes taking off all the time here," he says sarcastically. "It's a real hub of aviation."

All that will change, airport advocates believe, and with it will come economic development for Catron County. The best part, they say, is that the federal government will pick up 95 percent of the nearly $3 million tab for whatever alternative is picked. The state will pay four percent, leaving the county to pay just $28,000-$30,000, which could even be in-kind donations of services or materials, rather than tax dollars. According to McKeen, Vernon Hollimon has offered to donate the acres to pay for the county's share, so the project "will cost Catron County absolutely nothing." (Hollimon also stands to reap up to $466,000 from the project, however.)

"PABA would lead everyone to believe that it is taxpayer money that is building the airstrip," says McKeen, "and that the money should be used for other, more needed projects in the county. This is not taxpayer money that comes from the federal or state budgets; this money comes from airport usage all over the US and is called the pilots' fund. These funds are collected exclusively to pay for building and maintaining airports. The money cannot be transferred to any other use in the county."

"The argument that the county has higher priorities, such as roads or 911 services, is another misconception," adds Hayes. "If the county doesn't improve the airport, it won't get these funds. It's use it or lose it."

Respondents to the public-input survey emphatically made that argument, however: They ranked schools the county's top priority, followed by public safety and health concerns and then the overflowing landfill. An improved airport ranked dead last among eight options, with zero percent.

But an airport is what Uncle Sam is willing to pay for, so apparently an airport on Whitewater Mesa is what Catron County gets.

Will an improved airport really be an engine of economic development? Even if 13 or 18 planes are someday based on what's now a quiet mesa, it's not entirely clear how that will translate to jobs down the road in Glenwood, beyond the initial construction funding. And proponents have been "deafeningly silent," as Mike Rose puts it, in offering public explanations.

"Yes, it's a desecration of a very beautiful spot, but the bottom line is economic," he adds. "Is this where the county should put its economic development efforts?"

"We all know that constructing the airstrip will bring employment and use local subcontractors," says McKeen. "Whoever builds the airstrip will use the services in the county area. It's not every day that Catron County gets a $3 million project." (The favored alternative B would actually net $2.26 million in construction after land purchases.)

Hangars will rent for $100 a month, McKeen adds, plus the airport will serve people with second homes here who want to commute by air. "This is just sound economics for Catron County."

Or is the Glenwood airport really what PABA implies—just a boondoggle, which will benefit only a handful of pilots and land owners? "That's up to the FAA to determine," Hayes replies. "It's up to them to determine whether there's a need for the project. That's not really our job as consultants."

"PABA says that two people [presumably Allred and Hollimon] are going to get wealthy after the airstrip goes in," says McKeen. "Since the county will get rent and taxes for any improvements on the airstrip such as hangars, fuel stations, etc., the county will get its proportionate share of anything that makes money. PABA seems to think that having wealth come into the county is a bad thing. PABA is sending a mixed message: small airports don't make money but yet somebody is going to get wealthy."

Opponents argue that, the FAA's potential generosity notwithstanding, the airport is not entirely a free lunch for Catron County. The county still must pay for the ongoing maintenance and operation of the airport for the next 20 years; otherwise, the FAA requires the land be restored to its original condition, an expensive proposition some peg at $50,000.

Warns Mike Rose, "This will be a huge white elephant."

Nonsense, says McKeen: "I guess we should be afraid that a meteorite will fall on the county at the same time. The very active pilots at Glenwood will always be there and there will be no demolishing of any airstrip."

Fees and private investment are supposed to offset the county's obligation, but PABA points to similar airports in Globe, Willcox and Bisbee/Douglas, Ariz., that all operate at a loss. Globe ultimately tired of paying a city and county subsidy totaling $50,000 and turned its airport over to the San Carlos Apache Nation. McKeen calls the comparison to Globe "blatant scare tactics" and says the best comparison is the existing 4,800-foot airstrip in Reserve, for which the county budgets $2,500 a year that's seldom spent.

However the numbers shake out, the airport plan still looks like a lose-lose proposition to opponents: If the projections are wrong, the county will be stuck with an expensive airport that nobody uses. But if the numbers are right, the wilderness will be ripped by the din of aircraft and blinking of airport lights and Glenwood will go the way of Taos, Jackson Hole or Aspen. "New richies," Glenwood resident Lee Sonne warned in a letter to the Silver City Daily Press, will demand new services, taxes will skyrocket and "most of us won't be able to live here anymore."

And yet, like the multi-headed hydra of mythology, the Glenwood airport plan refuses to die. Cut off one head and two more working papers or reports spring up to take its place.

Mike Rose offers another analogy. "It's like one of those morality Western movies of the 1950s," he says. "All that's missing is a hero in a white hat who's willing to stand up for what's right."

People Against Big Airport (PABA) can be contacted by writing Box 44, Glenwood, NM 88039, or emailingpaba@gilanet.com. PABA's Web site, www.pabanetwork.com, contains copies of many of the public documents relating to the Glenwood airport controversy.

There is no similar group for airport advocates to contact, although County Commissioner Hugh B. McKeen suggests writing the FAA, congressional representatives and senators with expressions of support. The Catron County Commission meets the first and third Wednesdays of each month.

David A. Fryxell is editor of Desert Exposure.

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