Prairie Engineers

Northeast Missouri Regional Airport 404 Permit

The North Central Missouri Regional Airport (NCMRA) Facility is located along U.S. Highway 36 (State Route 5) in Linn County, Missouri and is jointly owned by the cities of Brookfield and Marcline. Prairie Engineers of Illinois provided assistance with completing field surveys, natural resource agency coordination, and environmental permitting for proposed facility improvements. The project had expansion and renovation components which included a 1,000 foot runway extension, roadway realignment/rerouting due to the extension, exclusionary boundary fence construction, pavement repairs, and runway excursion safety area (RESA) improvements. The project was constructed in multiple phases, but completed in less than one year. The runway length was a critical factor as FAA minimum standards for take-off and landing distances prevented larger desired aircraft from operating at the facility under the FAA "accelerate-to-stop" rule.

Prairie Engineers staff worked closely with the design engineers during the development of the plan to take wetland and waterway locations into account as part of avoidance and minimization for these resources. Impacts to streams including all waterway crossings were purposely avoided; however, less than a half-acre of wetlands and a little more than a half-acre of non-jurisdictional open water areas were impacted by the project. The impacts to these resources were the result of removal of former farm ponds, and were necessary to reduce wildlife attractants within the operations area of the airport as established by the FAA. Tree clearing was included as part of the project to improve sightlines; however, avoidance and minimization efforts included no grubbing or disturbance of the rootballs of trees present on the banks of any waterways. The careful coordination between the design engineers and the resource agencies provided an accelerated permitting process keeping the project with budget and schedule.

Click here for other Environmental Permitting projects