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Houston County Airport will no longer offer GPS service
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By Charlie Warner
Argus News Editor
Persons flying into the Houston County Airport, located just south of Caledonia, will have to depend solely on visual controls. As of Nov. 29, 2008, the local airport was forced to cancel its global positioning system (GPS) service it had been offering to incoming and departing air craft.
The Houston County Board learned of this development at the Nov. 25 board meeting. According to County Highway Engineer Brian Pogodzinski, the State Aeronautics Board had reviewed the runway situation at the airport and made recommendations a number of years ago. The county was under the impression it still had substantial time to conduct a study of the recommendations and formulate a plan. Unfortunately, the state board accelerated the time frame for having the airport come into compliance. Time ran out as of last Saturday.
According to Pogodzinski, the county would have to conduct some runway improvements, move a number of airplane hangers the state felt were too close to the runways, and cut down a number of trees that are on private land near the airport. The improvements would require the county obtaining approximately 130 acres of land and an additional 60 acres of easements.
“The bottom line is the recommendations from the state would take a lot of time and one heck of a pile of money,” Commissioner Dave Corcoran said.
“That is correct,” Pogodzinski replied.
“Do we really need GPS at our airport?” Commissioner Tom Bjerke asked.
Pogodzinski said the GPS system is mainly used during foggy weather when the La Crosse Airport is fogged in. He didn’t feel there would be a real impact for Houston County.
“With this timeline, and the costs involved, it appears as if this is a done deal,” Bjerke noted.
No action was taken on this issue.
In other board action:
Primary launch site
Tom Molling of the County Highway Department told the board the Caledonia Area Chamber of Commerce had requested the county airport serve as the second choice for the annual Bluff Valley Balloon Rally, which will take place this weekend.
Over the years, the balloon rally has always been held at the airport. Up until two years ago, the FAA had allowed the county to close the airport to all air traffic all day Saturday and on Sunday morning. The FAA will no longer allow the airport to be closed all day. So the past two years, county employees have had to close the airport during the Saturday morning launch, re-open it for the rest of the morning, close it again for the afternoon launch, and re-open it again after the balloons were up in the air. Then, if weather permitted the third launch Sunday morning, county employees would have to go through the procedure a third time.
According to Molling, the cost if there were three launches over the weekend, is about $1,600 in overtime and weekend pay. He added he was told the Balloon Rally committee was looking at an in-town launch and wanted to have the county airport as a backup in case the weather was too warm, making the launch site at the high school campus too soft and muddy.
“The balloon rally is the major part of Caledonia’s winter celebration. I feel we need to support this,” Commissioner Ann Thompson said.
“If we would just know if the launch was going to be at the airport, we could make the necessary arrangements,” Molling added.
A member of the balloon committee was attending the meeting and felt if it was more workable for the county, the airport could still be considered the primary launch site.
A motion was made and unanimously passed to consider the air port the primary launch site for the balloon rally.
Sign project bid approved
The board approved the low bid of $415,236 submitted by Highway Technologies for the county-wide township sign improvement project. The county received six bids for the project. The low bid was nearly $100,000 less than the engineer’s bid.
Houston County is one of six counties in the state they will be replacing worn, faded, or damaged signs, and adding safety signs where needed. Houston County has approximately 450 miles of township roads with nearly 5,000 existing safety signs. About 75 percent of these signs will just have the sign replaced, while 25 percent will have both the sign and pole replaced, or new signs be installed where officials feel they are needed.
The original estimate of the program was $800,000. But because many of the existing sign posts won’t have to be replaced at more competitive prices, the final cost was about half the original estimate. All but five percent of the cost of the program will be paid for by the state. The other five percent will be divided between the townships, which will run about $2,000 per township.
You can contact Charlie Warner at
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