Tipton Airport

Anne Arundel County could get a delayed holiday gift next month if plans to expand a lease for Tipton Airport go through as scheduled.Army officials are working on an addendum to the lease it signed with the county this year that would let the county start using most of the airfield, including the runway and taxiways.Tipton Airport is an Army airfield that closed in September 1995 because of military budget cuts. The county wants to convert it into a general aviation airport and has spent $300,000 in the past three years on an airport manager, consultants and other costs to open it.The county now has use of only a small parcel there that includes three hangars.

The Environmental Protection Agency has ordered a cleanup of unexploded ordnance at Fort Meade's Tipton Airport in hopes of speeding the transfer of the airfield to the county for public use.As early as January, the EPA could separate the 366-acre airport parcel from highly polluted post properties that are targeted for a multimillion-dollar cleanup, officials said. Pilots could be using the field soon thereafter.bTC "Our first priority is the Tipton parcel," said Henry J. Sokolowski, chief of the EPA division overseeing federal facilities on the Superfund list of the nation's most environmentally hazardous sites.

First, a rare plant got in Tipton Airport's way. Then, a floodplain blocked its plans. Now, the airport's engineers say they have found a way to build long-sought, garage-like hangars on the former Army airfield. The site should look familiar to pilots watching the T-hangar developments. It's the same field that airport board members first flagged as ideal for the hangars more than two years ago - the one they were ready to write off because of the endangered, spiky-thistled plant sprouting from a ditch in the middle of it. The new plan is to split the field, saving part as a sanctuary for the plant while building on the rest.

The pilot of a small plane that crashed in Anne Arundel County on Thursday shortly after takeoff had been ordered moments earlier to return to Tipton Airport because he was flying in restricted air space without clearance, according to a recording of conversations between him and air traffic controllers. "You are violating the ADIZ [Air Defense Identification Zone]," an unidentified air traffic controller tells the pilot. "You need to land at Tipton immediately, and I'll have them get you a number for air defense."

The pilot of a single-engine plane that crashed at Tipton Airport, killing him and his passenger, failed to get flight clearance before takeoff, according to a preliminary investigation report. An employee of the airport in western Anne Arundel County told the pilot, Daniel L. Eberhardt, 57, of Downers Grove, Ill., after he filed his flight plan Oct. 19 that he needed a special code before heading into restricted airspace on his trip home, the National Transportation Safety Board said in the report released this week.

When it comes to Tipton Airport, Sam Minnitte doesn't want to talk dates anymore."A lot of folks I work with always tease me about how long it's taken Tipton to come together," said Minnitte, who for five years has been at the forefront of Anne Arundel County's push to turn a former Fort Meade landfill and Army airfield into a general aviation airport.Minnitte, assistant to the county executive and former airport project manager, has made numerous predictions that the 346-acre site would be transferred to the county within months.

The federal crackdown on pollution at Fort Meade followed six years of pressure from the Environmental Protection Agency and repeated complaints of foot-dragging by the Army, according to letters and other documents filed about the dispute.The delays might have allowed contamination to creep through ground water onto Tipton Airport, and the Army has had to drill through new construction to monitor ground contamination in one part of the Anne Arundel County base, documents show.Investigations into the extent of the problem -- and whether the base should be listed among the nation's most polluted sites -- dragged on because the Army haggled over standards and lacked organization, EPA officials say.It has been 10 years since Congress declared parts of Fort Meade surplus under the Base Realignment and Closure Act, and Tipton Airport still has not been transferred or leased, said Drew Lausch, Superfund project manager.

Two months after the Federal Aviation Administration lifted all flying restrictions at Tipton Airport, those operating the former Army airfield are not looking back. They say they're getting past losses incurred during the month when the federal government closed airports near Washington after the attacks Sept. 11 and the two subsequent months when flights were severely restricted. "In our case, we kind of made the decision to bite the bullet, if you will, and move on," said Tipton spokesman David Almy.

The Carroll County Regional Airport, which is on the verge of a $60 million expansion, has been chosen as the 2005 Airport of the Year by the Maryland Aviation Administration. The award, which recognizes excellence in operations and service, comes as county officials are considering a proposal that would double the airport's capacity, opening the facility to more and larger aircraft and generating jobs in the region. "Of the 35 airports under MAA's jurisdiction, ours was selected for this award," said Gary Horst, who supervises the airport as administrator of the county's Office of Performance Auditing and Special Projects.

Tipton Airport never saw this one coming. The 347-acre airport at Fort Meade in Anne Arundel County has grown accustomed to delays in its 13-year transition from a military airfield to a general aviation county airport. It landed on, then was quickly removed from, the Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund list of the nation's most hazardous sites. Then, when its board inched ahead on a much-delayed project to build new hangars, a rare plant was found in a drainage ditch and blocked the airport's way. "Airport management is not an exercise in instant gratification," said David Almy, Tipton Airport Authority's spokesman and an executive at a Washington aviation trade group.