St. George Regional Airport

momentarily interrupted when it closed down completely in order to repair its only runway, which at 9,300 X 150 feet is large enough to handle Boeing 737s and 757s, as well as the U.S. military’s Boeing C-17 Globemasters and KC-135 Stratotankers. “When they built the Airport, we knew there were some problems with blue clay out here,” says Airport Manager, Rich Stehmeier. “They thought they had engineered it correctly, and the FAA signed off on the engineering and the specs.” But over time, the clay caused the runway to ripple. So it needed to be excavated and replaced in order to meet FAA safety specs for smoothness. “We closed down the Airport for four months and tore out 5,400 feet of runway, and we went 200 feet wide, and 17 feet down,” Stehmeier reports. “We also went two feet down on each side of the runway out to 200 feet on both sides and we regraded the entire safety area.” All the blue clay was removed down to 17 feet and replaced with five feet of a material that’s ST . GEORGE REGIONAL A I RPORT like the clay plug that’s used in landfills. “It’s optimally moisturized and, basically, water does not go through it. On top of that was engineered fill and, two feet below the surface, they put in a new water barrier, a membrane about 3/8 of an inch thick. We’re hoping that the engineers are correct and that we won’t have to do anything other than maybe an overlay for strengthening of the asphalt for the next 20 years.” In the four months that the Airport was closed, it put some $20 million directly into the local economy, because, as Stehmeier explains, “the contractor who did it for us is local. The electrician who did all the electrical work after we tore everything up is also right out of St. George. The people who supplied the asphalt –Western Rock – have two plants here in St. George. The engineering firm has a base here. The only other major thing we had on the project was the membrane. That membrane came out of France and the Netherlands to the tune of about $5.5 million.”