RDU says it may have use for a neighboring former Superfund site

Before Raleigh-Durham International Airport can complete a planned new runway to handle large planes, it will need to buy several pieces of property along Lumley Road, including parts of a former Superfund site.

The airport authority agreed Thursday to hire a consultant to help negotiate the purchase of land and businesses at the north end of the planned runway. The property is needed for buffer zones beyond the end of the paved runway, which airport officials hope will replace the current 10,000-foot runway on the west side of the airport in three to five years.

The project also will require rerouting a stretch of Lumley Road between Glenwood Avenue and Interstate 540.

It’s not clear yet how much property the airport will require. But William Sandifer, the airport’s chief operating officer, told the authority that it will likely include the Estes Express Lines trucking terminal and at least some of the former Ward Transformer Co. site off Mt. Herman Road.

From 1964 until 2006, Ward used the site to repair and recycle transformers that contained cancer-causing PCBs for cooling and insulation. Waste oil containing PCBs was frequently spilled, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency added Ward to the Superfund national priority list of hazardous waste sites in 2003. Clean-up of the contaminated soil was completed in 2014.

Sandifer told the authority that whatever lingering contamination issues might exist at Ward or the other property it will acquire should not preclude its use as a runway buffer zone.

The new runway will be built next to the existing 10,000-foot runway, which opened in 1986 and is nearing the end of its useful life. The runway is the longer of the two commercial runways at RDU and handles most of the airport’s 400 daily flights, including all of the flights to the West Coast and overseas.

When the new runway is completed, the existing one will be turned into a taxiway.

This story was originally published September 22, 2017 at 10:57 AM with the headline "RDU says it may have use for a neighboring former Superfund site."