Remnants of what appears to have been some of the first industry in the Kanawha Valley are holding up a Yeager Airport land-acquisition project, director Terry Sayre told the airport's board Wednesday.
Artifacts from an 1800s tannery was discovery at a property on Barlow Drive, he said.
"That's going to hold it up until we get it approved by the [state Historic Preservation Office]," Sayre said after the meeting.
The airport has applied for a grant from the Federal Aviation Authority to buy out willing homeowners in the area in an effort to create a runway protection zone, which the FAA recommends. The airport got an initial grant to do environmental studies of the properties. The archaeological findings are hindering an application for a second grant, which will allow the airport to purchase some of the houses, Sayre said.
Sayre said he would like to see a portion of the properties become green space.
"The airport is not condemning anyone," Sayre said. "We have a lot of willing sellers in that neighborhood and we'd like to be able to accommodate them."
Caryn Gresham, a spokeswoman for the West Virginia Division of Culture and History, the archives and history department is doing more research after they found a listing for "Killinger C and Co" tannery along the Elk River in an 1883-1884 Charleston city directory.
Gresham said the historic preservation office visited Yeager's project site in September 2016 and reviewed an archaeological evaluation from another agency, Cultural Resource Analysts Inc. One of the sites looked like it had historic and prehistoric significance.
The Division of Culture asked that Yeager have a follow-up assessment done to see if there was something historic there that needed to be interpreted or remain in place. The historic preservation office has not yet received a follow-up report. Once it does, the office will review it and determine what the next steps would be, Gresham said. She added that the follow-up assessments typically take a while and the office was not surprised that they had not received it yet.
Also Wednesday, Sayre said the airport is waiting on a final report from the manufacturer of an engineered materials arresting system (EMAS) before formally asking the FAA to fund the project. The airport also is waiting to hear back from United Airlines about how the proposed project might affect it. Sayre said the airport has already heard from other airlines.
"We don't want to hurt ourselves commercially," Sayre said.
Sayre said after the airport finishes these last fews things, officials anticipate the FAA will approve the funding. He said the airport plans to ask for at least $20 million. Sayre thanked the state's congressional delegation for being supportive of the project.
The project would add about 350 feet to accommodate a new EMAS bed, which is a runway-wide bed of specially engineered concrete blocks designed to fracture and crumble if an airplane overruns the runway and rolls onto it, much in the way a runaway truck ramp filled with crushed rock brings trucks to safe stops along steep highway grades.
There was more than 400 feet of EMAS before the 2015 collapse of a fill area off its main runway's safety overrun area.
The EMAS addition "will stop a plane at 70 knots," Sayre said. "And that was the level of safety we had before the collapse and that's where we want to be after the collapse."
Sayre also said that the ride-sharing service Lyft started operating at the airport within the last two weeks. A similar service, Uber, has been operating there since earlier this year. Lyft paid the airport the same $3,200 amount that Uber paid for its contract, board member Trip Shumate told the board.
Reach Lori Kersey at lori.kersey@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-1240 or follow @LoriKerseyWV on Twitter.