Construction of a new runway at the Poplar Bluff Regional Business Airport is running behind schedule, thanks to far more rain than normal for this time of year.
“Normally this time of year, the rains stop and we enter our drier season, but that didn’t happen this year. We’ve had all these unseasonably heavy deluges coming down, and it has slowed the process down,” said airport manager Gary Pride.
The runway renovation project, which will replace an aging and deteriorating asphalt landing strip with a much stronger concrete one, initially was scheduled to take 30 days, beginning May 16. The start of the process was delayed a few days because of rains, and they’ve hampered construction efforts since.
As of late last week, the airport had received more than 6 inches of rain since the work began May 19.
“Had it not been for the excessive rainfall, they would have easily held to the 30 days,” said Pride of the contractor, Emery Sapp & Sons, out of Springfield, Missouri.
“We’ve had two time delays now to try to let some of the moisture migrate out by evaporation and by chemical treatments,” Pride added.
The contractor, Pride said, “does not lack for the amount of equipment that’s necessary to perform the task. They have everything they need, The only thing they cannot control is excessive moisture, but unfortunately, that’s what we’ve had.”
Currently, Pride said, all of the old asphalt has been ripped up and removed, and the “ground soil is almost to grade.”
With dry weather expected for several days now, Pride said, officials are expecting an “extremely progressive week.”
Beginning Monday, crews were to begin chemically treating the soil to help it dry out faster.
“They have been doing some, but the rains negated those efforts,” Pride said. “All they could do was hold their own, but it wasn’t improving anything.”
Also during the first few days of this week, crews were expected to finish cement stabilization of the sub-grade. Beginning Thursday, and lasting through Sunday, they are “ going to start putting the base rock out and put it to grade. It has to be a certain elevation,” Pride said.
On Monday, workers are expected to make final elevation trims to the rock base, and the following day, paving lanes will be set up.
“We hope to start paving the first lane by Wednesday the 23rd,” Pride said. “It takes four days to pave the whole thing.”
The 100-foot-wide runway, Pride said, will have four paved lanes, each 25 feet wide.
After a period of time to let the concrete cure, “there will be some temporary markings put on it, and then they will let the traffic start coming back in,” Pride said.
Afterward, Pride noted, there likely will be a few temporary closures to allow for the installation of painted markings and other things on the runway surface, but those are expected to be very brief.
Even with the rains and delays, Pride said, the project still should be extended less than a week beyond initial expectations.
“We may be looking at five days longer than expected, but considering how we’ve been hammered with moisture, that’s still a win,” he said.
The rain delays, Pride said, also have increased the budget on the nearly $4 million project, funded primarily through MoDOT and FAA grants, but those increases have been minimal.
Once the runway is complete, Pride said, the city will begin seeing the benefits of it.
“It is a runway of the future,” Pride said. “With this new runway, we are not limiting our possibilities. It opens the door to the future.
“We’re opening the runway to aircraft that the region has grown into, and if we ever hope to get commercial air traffic, we’ve got to be able to support the bigger aircraft.”
Concrete supports bigger aircraft, Pride noted, and “we keep seeing larger and heavier aircraft wanting to come into Poplar Bluff.”
Eventually, Pride said, officials hope to lengthen the current 5,000-foot runway another 1,000 feet to accommodate larger aircraft.