Four Corners Regional Airport

8 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 6 FOUR CORNERS REGIONAL A I RPORT BVM: What sort of infrastructure projects have you been working on? Lewis: “We’ve been doing a phenomenal amount of airport reconstruction and rehabilitation in the past couple of years. Last summer, we rebuilt runway 5/23 entirely. This summer, we’re going to rebuild the taxiway structure associated with that runway. It’s mostly funded by the FAA through the AIP program. “The airport has an official stormwater pollution prevention program that’s approved by the EPA, and we have a local environmental company under contract to do quarterly inspections. We never have a problem with anything in that regard, because they are basically looking for any kind of unclean runoff that would make its way to the river. The area where all the facilities are at the airport – the parking lots, etc.– they’re all plugged into the city storm drain system, and the remainder of the airport drains into ‘holding ponds’ that aren’t really ponds except when it rains. Within a day or two that water just absorbs into the ground. It’s clean water that comes off the pavement. “On the technology side, for runway 5/23 we upgraded the visual approach slope indicators (VASIs) to precision approach path indicators (PAPIs). The PAPI is much easier to maintain and it has all modern technology, so there is a lot less maintenance and cost involved in the operation. It provides an excellent product for pilots who are making visual approaches.” BVM: How do you promote the airport and the region? Lewis: “We partner with a lot of organizations, including the City of Farmington economic development office, and the relationship we have with the Farmington Convention & Visitors Bureau is absolutely the best. We use them whenever we’re asked for information about the community and they reach out to us when they