Airport Construction Work Resumes Slowly After Temporary Settlement To FAA Shutdown

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Construction gradually resumed Monday on control towers at two California airports, days after Congress temporarily settled an impasse that had shut down aviation projects nationwide.

The work slowly restarted on the towers at Palm Springs and Oakland international airports, where a portion of the 60 workers for each project were evaluating damage to untended work sites and seeking to recall laborers and equipment that had been reallocated to other projects in their regions.

The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement that construction was able to resume because agency engineers were back on the job. Spokesman Ian Gregor had no additional details about the resumption of work that had ground to a halt in late July due to the standoff between Republicans and Democrats in Congress over funding for the FAA.

At least eight electricians were back at work in Oakland, said Victor Uno, business manager for the International Brotherhood Electrical Workers Local 595.

Workers were checking on equipment, some of which may have been taken to be used at other construction sites over the past weeks, and recalling apprentice electricians who were assigned to other tasks.

"Stop-start, stop-start: that isn't how construction works," Uno said. "You've got to hit a project and see it through to completion, unless there's a natural problem -- flood or rains. But this was a man-made calamity."

Oakland airport spokeswoman Rosemary Barnes confirmed that work was to resume Monday, but did not know how long it would take for it to regain its pre-shutdown momentum. Devcon Construction Inc., the prime contractor for Oakland's new tower, did not return a call.

Meanwhile, Palm Springs airport executive director Tom Nolan said some crews were on site at his airport making plans to summon personnel and equipment so work can begin, but the actual labor there had not yet resumed.

"It takes time for the contractor to remobilize," he said.

Prime contractor Swinerton Builders said in a Palm Springs Desert Sun story this weekend that rain on the site had damaged some previously erected drywall but he did not know if it would have to be replaced. He said the shutdown added an extra $2,000 a day in unused rented trailers, equipment and fences.

The partisan standoff that led to the shutdown began last month when Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, signaled his intention cut subsidies for rural airports in a bill to extend FAA's operating authority through mid-September.

During the standoff, the FAA furloughed 4,000 workers but kept air traffic controllers and most safety inspectors on the job. Some 70,000 workers on construction-related jobs on airport projects were idled as the FAA couldn't pay for the work.

John Husing, who studies the economy of the region surrounding Palm Springs as an economist with San Bernardino County-based Economics & Politics Inc., said the crisis was an unwelcome development in a state that been hemorrhaging construction jobs since the start of the housing market downturn.

Just 565,000 were working in construction-related jobs in California in June, according to the most recent state government statistics, down more than 40 percent from their February 2006 peak of 945,100.

Husing said there was a negative economic ripple effect caused by the loss of the airport construction jobs.

"If they're not getting a paycheck, they're not spending it at a store so in fact it's more than just the people who are directly hit," he said.

Uno said his union's electricians were happy to be back at work, but he was wary of the next round of disputes that he feared were inevitable when Congress' stopgap agreement expires in September.

"Workers feel like they're being held hostage to some of the agendas in Washington, D.C., and that's not right," he said.

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