PEORIA, Ill. – Seventeenth District Congressman Eric Sorensen says the air traffic control tower he saw Monday at the Peoria International Airport is old.
Really…really…old.
Case in point, Sorensen says: the tower’s leaky roof.
“Think about all the equipment that is in there that is used to keep people safe over our neighborhoods,” said Sorensen (D-East Moline). “This type of funding is going to ensure that we’ve got a solution to that problem.”
Sorensen says that’s to say nothing of how problematic it would be fixing a leaky roof that has asbestos in it. He says when he had heard last year that almost half of the $30 million in grant money to build a new tower – most of an estimated $37 million total – had been pulled, he had to work to get that money back.
Director of Airports Gene Olson says the airport has been using a $15 million grant to do planning and other things associated with the building.
Then, Olson says, the second $14 million grant, he thought, was awarded, retracted, applied for again, and awarded for real this time.
“I remember, at the end of this couple week process, I got a phone call from the (Federal Aviation Administration), and it was somebody I know really well,” said Olson. “She told me, ‘Look, your funding is still there. It never went away.’ So, I think what it boiled down to was a misunderstanding, that we didn’t know it was being held; we thought it was gone.”
Nevertheless, Olson says Sorensen helped him sort the mess out.
16th District Republican Congressman Darin LaHood says he also supports the project, as did Sorensen’s predecessor in Congress, Cheri Bustos.
Groundbreaking for the new tower is expected in July, and is expected to be complete in two years.
(Reporting by Will Stevenson and TJ Carson, WMBD Radio News)
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