HIGHFILL — The old runway is going to be chopped up next week.
That was the news Kelly Johnson, director of Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport, told the airport authority board of directors during a meeting Wednesday.
Johnson explained the $40 million project to replace the damaged runway at the airport west of Springdale and Rogers will begin when The Harper Co. of Hebron, Ky., uses a machine she called a “guillotine” to begin cutting things up.
Sean Green, chief engineer with the company, said in a telephone interview that the device, called a guillotine breaker, looks like its namesake with a blade that sits 10 feet off the ground, mounted on a flatbed truck. As the truck moves slowly forward, the blade falls onto the runway every six inches or so, carving up the old pavement.
With a mild winter and spring to add more construction time, the runway could be replaced within a year, Johnson said.
An alternate runway that is being used while the repairs are ongoing went into service in July.
The damaged 8,800-foot runway was installed when the airport opened in October 1998. In 2005 airport officials identified problems with the concrete. A chemical reaction known as alkali-silica reactivity has cracked the pavement.
The reaction forms a microscopic gray gel that expands into spider-like cracks. The condition has affected operations at several airports across the country.
The top layer of the primary runway, 15 inches of Portland concrete, will have to be replaced, as will its concrete base, drainage system and electrical system.
Scott Van Laningham, the airport’s executive director, said that once the runway is replaced, the instrument landing system — recently shifted to the alternate runway — will have to be moved again. He said taking that into account, the new runway should be in service within 18 to 24 months.
Earlier this month the airport got word it had received a $19.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to help fund the project. Combined with other grant funding, the airport has $39.5 million to put toward the runway replacement.
Van Laningham said the ability to use the grant money quickly, to push dollars back into the economy, was an advantage the airport had over other competitors for the grant money.
“We were shovel-ready,” he said. “We had the need and we’ll get the work done quickly.”
The project will result in mountains of broken pavement that will be reused on the airport grounds, Johnson said. The rubble will be ground down and used for drainage projects. Steel and copper wiring from the runway will be gathered and recycled, Johnson told the board.
Once the main runway is back in operation, the alternate runway will be used as a taxiway, shortening taxi time for aircraft and opening up more of the airport property to development.
Business, Pages 26 on 09/27/2012