Balancing Airport Capacity Requirements with Environmental Concerns: Legal Challenges to Airport Expansion

Regulatory agencies such as the Federal Aviation Administration must balance the need to expand airport capacity with concerns about environmental impact. This balance is governed by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which establishes the environmental review procedures governing airport...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Transportation research record 2011, Vol.2206 (1), p.92-99
Main Author: Wyatt, Timothy R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Airport capacity
Airport expansion
Decision analysis
Environmental law
Environmental legislation
Focusing
Legal
Policies
Citations: Items that this one cites
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Regulatory agencies such as the Federal Aviation Administration must balance the need to expand airport capacity with concerns about environmental impact. This balance is governed by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which establishes the environmental review procedures governing airport development activities that receive federal funding. This paper presents a comprehensive study of legal challenges to airport expansion, focusing on the influence of environmental procedural statutes such as NEPA. All known reported court opinions since the enactment of NEPA involving environmental challenges to physical airport expansion were reviewed and characterized with respect to the factual background of each case, the form of the legal challenge, and the disposition of the reviewing court. A regression analysis was performed to determine which factors influence a court's decision to approve the environmental review or to enjoin airport expansion pending further environmental review.
ISSN:0361-1981
2169-4052
DOI:10.3141/2206-11