By Ron Case
Eden Prairie is an amazing place to live with a great mix of residential and commercial tax base, the best park and open space system in the Twin Cities, and one of the finest school systems in the state. But like about any city in America, we have our detractions as well: Midwest Asphalt pounding and beeping neighbors in the north; a quarter million cars and trucks a day spewing noise and pollution across bordering neighborhoods, and of course, the airport in the south.
Our very own Flying Cloud Airport. There’s likely not another amenity in the city that creates such polarity between proponents and opponents. Living by the airport for the last 20 years, I know firsthand the frustration of 6 a.m. jets taking off, the incessant buzzing of helicopters in a repeat training pattern, and the late evening test run-ups. Several times a day, I catch a whiff of the carcinogenic jet fuel that regularly wafts over a third of Eden Prairie. I wonder about where all of the airport-generated polluted water ends up. And I sometimes think about how incredibly easy it would be for a terrorist to fly a plane out of such a low security facility.
I’m guessing that the divide between those Eden Prairie residents who have committed their lives to fighting the airport and everybody else has mostly to do with geography. For anyone living north of Scenic Heights, the airport is no more of a nuisance than MSP or a neighboring highway for that matter. But for the thousands who live south of Pioneer Trail, it affects their outdoor living every single day. To those people, Flying Cloud Airport is the single biggest detriment to the quality of life in this great city of ours.
When I was part of the City Council in 2002 that signed the now infamous “agreement” with the Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC), we did so begrudgingly after hiring one of the best law firms in the nation with expertise in fighting airports. The problem we learned early on is that the Legislature empowered the MAC with zoning authority over cities. So, in essence we were told that the MAC didn’t just hold all of the cards, they had already won the game. With one exception: Being political (appointed by the governor) the MAC was susceptible to public and political pressure. In the end we signed, getting what little (yet significant) crumbs out of the agreement (pavement depth limits, runway length limits, limits on night-time run-ups, and a slew of voluntary proposals) in exchange for the city formally ceasing its legal “fight” against the expansion.
But never did I nor individual members of the council at the time, cease to personally oppose the expansion. Furthermore, it became all the more important to have a City Council that, far from jumping into bed with the MAC, instead would stay vigilant in its efforts to police the expansion if it ever came to be, to flood the MAC with continued complaints regarding agreement abuses, and to constantly pursue the political possibilities above the MAC that might prove the expansion to be unnecessary.
I believe the expansion of Flying Cloud Airport is completely unjustified in our world of 2008 with air traffic declining, aviation fuel prices soaring and an Eden Prairie growing beyond our projections of 70,000 people. It drains our tax base, takes far more than it gives, and on top of all of that, it floods our city with noise, air and water pollution. It may be outside of our control to stop the expansion, but it is never outside of our ability to fight it. The aviation industry has the MAC on their side. The people of Eden Prairie have ... the City Council?

Ron Case is a former Eden Prairie City Council member.