Council approves payment for airport project

By PHIL MONSON

At the last Humboldt City Council meeting, the council approved another payment for the runway rehabilitation pro-ject at the Humboldt Municipal Airport.

The council approved a payment of $212,684.53 to Godbersen-Smith Construction of Ida Grove. Work at the airport began in early August and was completed in four months.

Eric Johnson, engineer with Kirkham Michael Company, and Jeff Sogge, of Clapsaddle-Garber Associates, Inc., construction observer, gave their reports to the council. Humboldt resident Dave Dodgen, who also serves on the airport commission, provided input as well.

“We were very pleased with how everything went on the project,” Johnson said. “All the test results have come back and have exceeded all of the FAA specifications. We are very pleased overall with the project.”

“It opened for traffic on Dec. 13 and today we did some testing with the electrical lighting system and the lights all turned on,” Sogge said. “There’s a couple of missing pieces because they had ordered the wrong thing, but they’ll be replaced as they come in. Dave Dodgen has been in contact with the FAA in getting the flight check done really soon.”

“Other than a little bit of seeding and some touchup grading, the runway is completed and operational,” Sogge said. “Everything went smoothly. I can’t think of a single thing that we had difficulty with except for the rock in your ground up there. They had some long days trenching through the rocky soils.”

“We thought that was bad, when they were digging for the base of one of the lights, it was solid rock. That light will never move with that concrete and rock base,” Sogge said. “Never seen that before. Kind of like working in quarry.”

“From paving to assembling the lighting, it all works great. It was completed within the time frame. Seeding will take place in the spring,” Sogge said.

Read the story in this week's issue of the Humboldt Independent!