Castle Airport

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the military use of this airport before 1995, see Castle Air Force Base.

Castle Airport

IATA: MER – ICAO: KMER – FAA: MER
Summary
Airport type		Public
Owner		Merced County Department of Commerce, Aviation, and Economic Development
Serves		Merced, California
Elevation AMSL		189 ft / 58 m
Coordinates		37°22′50″N 120°34′05″W / 37.38056, -120.56806
Runways
Direction	Length		Surface
Direction	ft	m	Surface
13/31	11,802	3,597	Asphalt/Concrete
Statistics (2006)
Aircraft operations			211,300
Based aircraft			76
Source: Federal Aviation Administration^[1]

Castle Airport (IATA: MER, ICAO: KMER, FAA LID: MER) is a public airport located seven miles (11 km) northeast of the central business district of Merced, in Merced County, California, United States. Castle Airport resides on land belonging to the former Castle Air Force Base. All of this land is owned jointly by the city of Merced, city of Atwater and the county of Merced. Until 2007 all of this land was administered by the JPA or Joint Powers Administration. The airfield itself is operated by the Merced County Department of Commerce, Aviation, and Economic Development.^[1]

Castle Airport is located at the former Castle Air Force Base which closed in 1995. It serves two large flight schools American School of Aviation (ASA) and Sierra Academy of Aeronautics both of which are specialized in training foreign pilots namely from India and China respectively. Activity related to these two schools makes up the majority of the air traffic at Castle. In early 2007, the control tower was reopened to handle increased training traffic.

Castle Air Museum is 500 yards (500 m) away, displaying 50 restored World War II, Korean War, and Cold War era aircraft. Among the exhibit highlights are a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, one of only 19 surviving, a Boeing B-52D Stratofortress, and the massive Convair B-36, one of only four surviving.

In May 2008, a subsidiary of Boeing, Alteon Training, announced that Castle Airport would be the site of their new flight training center. The training center will cost an estimated $25 million and feature a Boeing 737 flight simulator. The program will be jointly run by Alteon and the Sierra Academy of Aeronautics and will train about 200 pilots a year to fly Boeing 737 passenger airliners. The center is expected to bring an estimated $8 million in annual revenue for Merced County.^[2] This big news story about Boeing Alteon Training was a misinformation. Check MERCastle.com for the true story as well as the current major redevelopment of Castle Airport by Federal Development, LLC.

1 Facilities and aircraft
2 Pollution
3 See also
4 References
- 4.1 Footnotes
5 External links

[edit] Facilities and aircraft

Castle Airport covers an area of 1,580 acres (639 ha) which contains one runway (13/31) with an 11,802 x 150 ft (3,597 x 46 m) asphalt and concrete pavement. For the 12-month period ending June 30, 2006, the airport had 211,300 aircraft operations, an average of 578 per day: 99.6% general aviation and 0.4% military. At that time there were 76 aircraft based at this airport: 84% single-engine, 9% multi-engine and 7% jet.^[1]

[edit] Pollution

Since the mid-1940s, aircraft maintenance, fuel management, and fire training activities on the base have generated wastes that consist primarily of waste fuels, oils, solvents, and cleaners. Base activities also have generated lesser amounts of paints and plating wastes.

The EPA currently has this base listed on their database due to the bulk wastes such as solvents, oils, fuels, and sludges which were disposed in pits at landfills around the base until 1977. Fuel and waste oils were incinerated by the Air Force during fire training exercises. The Air Force ceased disposal of hazardous waste on site in 1977, and the base was officially closed in 1995. During the following cleanup efforts, all hazardous and toxic materials which the US Air Force was unwilling or unable to transport offsite were sealed into four onsite landfills.

EPA Investigations have been completed at multiple areas of contamination including landfills, discharge areas, chemical disposal areas, fire training areas, fuel spill areas, and polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) spill areas. Through the fiscal year 2006, $164.27 million was spent on cleanup activities at Castle. The USAF expects to spend an additional $70.98 million through fiscal year 2044. Approximately 6,000 people obtain their drinking water from both municipal and private wells located near the site. The principal pollutant at the base TCE Trichloroethylene was found to exist in a plume. Merced Irrigation puriefied the water at the edge of the plume and released the purified water outside the plume working their way inward they managed to clean the contaminated water. The methods used to purify the groundwater included passing the water through carbon filters and then aeriating it. The pollutant remaining after purification was packaged in a barrel and removed from the site. In 1991, a Base Realiagnment and Closure (BRAC) Cleanup Team (BCT) was created to review and offer comments/recommendations on the progress of the cleanup effort at Castle. BCT membership included respresentatives from the USAF, federal and state regulatory agencies, and appointed representatives from the governing bodies of surrounding communities. The Castle RAB or Restoration Advisory Board which was established in 1994 on behalf of the former Castle Air Force Base was responsible for reviewing Federal cleanup methods and efforts and was officially adjourned on January 16, 2007. The Castle RAB was chaired jointly by a USAF representative and a community member. The Castle RAB met quarterly from 1994 to 2003, at which time the group reduced the frequency of its meetings to three times per year.