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For Avroh Shah, the Palo Alto Baylands offers the perfect recreational respite – a scenic place to take hikes with family and friends during the summer months.
Like thousands of Palo Alto residents and visitors, he is well familiar with the nature preserve’s trail network and treasured amenities like the duck pond, which the city created more than 80 years ago and which remains a popular hub for birdwatchers and casual strollers.
As a climate activist and a member of the group Palo Alto Student Climate Coalition, he also knows not to take the existence of the Baylands for granted. While Palo Alto enjoys its bit of marshland, the vast majority of the Bay Area isn’t so lucky. In most of the San Francisco Bay Area, the marshland has been taken over by developments, he said.
“Palo Alto has done a pretty decent job with the small bit of the Baylands that’s left,” Shah, a rising sophomore at Palo Alto High School, told this publication. “At this point, we’re fighting for every inch we can get.”
So like many others, Shah became concerned when he heard about the city’s plan to craft a new vision for the Palo Alto Airport, which is located right next to the nature preserve. The planning exercise, which is designed to make the small but bustling airport compatible with Federal Aviation Administration safety guidelines, examines five alternatives, four of which would expand the airport’s lone runway (the fifth is basically keeping the status quo).
Two of the options are particularly ambitious and contentious. Known as Alternative 3 and Alternative 4, each would expand the runway from its current length of 2,443 feet to 3,500 feet, the length recommended by the FAA. The main difference is that Alternative 3 would cut into the municipal golf course while Alternative 4 would shift the runway toward the duck pond, which is located just southeast of the runway. According to officials from the Public Works Department, this would require significant filling of the duck pond area.
For airport officials, Alternative 4 offers numerous advantages over the other options: a longer taxilane, space for vertiports and a longer runway. The runway would be adjacent to the new levee and, according to the city, they would be at roughly the same elevation. Alternative 3, meanwhile, would keep the runway below the level of the proposed levee.
Yet Shah and many other environmentalists, including members of the Sierra Club and the Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society, believe the destruction that these options would wreak on sensitive Baylands habitat would far outweigh these benefits. They believe that any plan that would infringe on the duck pond should be taken off the table.
“When they say, ‘We’re going to fill in this area and expand the airport in this area,’ they’re setting a precedent for future expansion and saying that it’s OK to harm this area of Palo Alto and East Palo Alto,” Shah said. “I think the airport needs to minimize its footprint.”
He is hardly alone. In recent public hearings, phone interviews and letters submitted to the City Council, local residents have voiced strong objections about the prospect of filling in the duck pond, which the city created in the 1930s to use as a swimming pool. Birds had other ideas and, in a Hitchcockian plot twist, wrested control of the pool from the humans and turned into a pond that is now one of the most iconic spots in the 1,900-acre preserve.
The issue hits particularly close to home for Diane McCoy, a retired Palo Alto Unified School teacher who lives a few blocks from the Baylands and who has been leading nature excursions and birdwatching trips in the area for more than 30 years. McCoy, who now volunteers with the nonprofits Environmental Volunteers and the Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society, can easily rattle off the many species that frequent the area, a roster that includes regulars like black-neck stilts (lanky shorebirds with pointy beaks and tall pink legs), gadwall ducks and mallard ducks as well as seasonal visitors like the northern shoveler ducks, which migrate to the pond around September to escape the cold winter and then head back north around March.
Then there are the species that don’t live in the pond but depend on it for nourishment — birds like the great blue heron, the snowy egret, the double-crested cormorant and the black-crowned night heron. There are the swallows that feast on the flies and gnats. And near the duck pond is the marshy area filled with pickleweed, the preferred snack of the nature preserve’s most famous endangered species: the salt-marsh harvest mouse. For this reason, the marshy area between the pond and the airport is just about as valuable as the pond itself, McCoy said.
This marshy area would be threatened by three of the five alternatives, all of which move the runway northeast, toward the pond. Alternative 5 in the city’s plans calls for a shorter runway than Alternatives 3 and 4 – 3,000 feet instead 3,500 feet — but it also relocates the runway in such a fashion that it would infringe on the area next to the pond. The runway in Alternative 2 is shorter still — 2,600 feet — and it would be located further from the pond. Yet this option, like the others, also comes with a levee that would encroach on to the marshland that currently separates the airport from the pond.
McCoy said she supports the airport’s mission to make its operations more efficient and sustainable, including its efforts to install solar panels, wean local pilots off leaded fuel and create infrastructure to support the emergence of electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. But rather than expand its facilities to accommodate larger planes like the Pilatus PC-12, the city should focus on smaller aircraft and work with other airports in the region to accommodate the bulkier aircraft, she said in an interview.
“It’s inconceivable to me that anybody, much less the City of Palo Alto, would even consider filling up more marsh and wetland in the San Francisco Bay Area, which is already over 98% filled,” McCoy said. “Especially in this day and age, where we need these places to offset emissions from fuels and cars and planes and everything else.”
Airport officials have emphasized in interviews and public hearings that the five alternatives are not exactly proposals. The city, they note, is required by the FAA to explore the airport’s needs for next 20 years, a period that according to city projections will include gradual growth in takeoffs and landings. The FAA’s guidelines also require the airport to plan for the “critical aircraft” — the most impactful aircraft that makes at least 500 takeoffs and landings in the airport in a year. In the case of Palo Alto Airport, that is the Pilatus PC-12.
Andrew Swanson, manager of Palo Alto Airport, said in a May interview that staff is not recommending any of the five alternatives — it is merely presenting them to the community for feedback before it finalizes the master plan.
“We’re just looking at all the options,” Swanson said.
Staff from the Department of Public Works, which oversees the airport, have already held five public hearings on the alternatives. The most recent of these, which took place on June 20, attracted a crowd of about 60 people, including environmental activists, elected officials and dozens of residents from Palo Alto, East Palo Alto and Menlo Park.
Some speakers supported plans to expand and upgrade the airport, a facility that they note provides life-saving benefits. But over the course of the tense meeting, many objected to the prospect of aving more planes flying over their homes and took issue with the airport’s noise and air quality impacts. Some urged the city to avoid doing anything that would harm the pristine and rich ecosystem of the Baylands.
Shani Kleinhaus, a legislative advocate for the Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society, was among those who argued for a minimalist approach. She said after the meeting that she would like Palo Alto to limit the goals of the airport project to “only what you absolutely have to do for safety and maintenance.”
“I think that they should absolutely minimize any encroachment — don’t extend the runway and don’t allow more planes,” Kleinhaus said. “Keep it to a minimum possible to maintain the airport and to address any safety issues.”
It will ultimately be up to the Palo Alto City Council to decide how ambitious the city should be when it comes to airport upgrades. Public Works staff and consultants plan to bring the five alternatives to the City Council for a study session — a meeting in which no decisions are made — some time in September, according to Brad Eggleston, director of the Department of Public Works. Airport officials will then use that feedback to create a master plan for the airport.
But while Palo Alto’s current vision for the airport remains hazy, it will likely include some growth. During a June 20 public hearing, Kim Fabend, a consultant with C&S Companies, noted that the airport today accommodates about 160,000 takeoffs and landings per year. With just one runway, the airfield is “almost at capacity,” she said.
The master plan will also look at ways to make sure that the airport’s apron (the sprawling area where aircraft are parked and maintained) and taxiways are efficient and safe, Fabend said. And it will consider ways to protect the airport from sea level rise. Hence the new levee.
City staff and consultants have emphasized throughout the process that they are taking the environmental concerns very seriously. This includes following the policy in the city’s Comprehensive Plan that explicitly limits the airport to one runway and that states: “minor expansion shall only be allowed in order to meet federal and State airport design and safety standards.”
“If the FAA process was followed 100%, we would be looking at a second runway,” Michael Luetgens, manager of airport operations, told this publication during a May airport tour. “But we know it’s not something that’s going to be done here.”
In recognition of growing community interest, Palo Alto staff had also posted on the city’s website a survey that summarizes the five alternatives and gauges public opinions. The online survey is available on the city’s website and it will remain open until Aug. 10. As of July 30, it had 1,259 responses.
But even if the plans are tentative, environmentalists like Shah, McCoy and hundreds of others see them as alarming. On July 23, Shah crafted an online petition that urges “protection of the Baylands, the Duck Pond, and all relevant creeks and trails from airport expansion.” More aircraft, he argued in the petition, means increased noise, higher emissions from aircraft that still use leaded fuel and loss of habitat and recreation space. Within a week, it had 610 signatures.
“The Baylands and Duck Pond serve as a vital recreational space for our community and escape from urban life,” Shah wrote. “This area prompts a healthier lifestyle offering opportunities for hiking, biking, birdwatching, and simply enjoying nature.”
Shah said he wants to see the airport “minimize its footprint.” Even though airport officials sometimes boast about their sustainability initiatives, they often fail to demonstrate how they can achieve their goals without developing into the Baylands. While some residents in Palo Alto and East Palo Alto are becoming aware of the airport master plan and are making their voices heard, Shah believes most don’t even know about the planning effort. And those who do are being asked to opine on “big maps and small print.”
“Many people don’t understand what’s happening, which led me to write the petition,” Shah said. “It’s just because I know that many Palo Alto and East Palo Alto residents really treasure the Baylands. They see it as a place to escape in the outdoors.”
Other residents raised similar concerns over the past two weeks in letters to the City Council. Palo Alto resident Sarah Vaughan contended in a letter earlier this month that filling in the pond “would be a continuation of the destruction of so many things that made our town a special place to live and raise a family.” Another resident, Jeannette Harrison, argued that the duck pond needs to be saved from any airport expansion.
“The Baylands and the area around the duck pond is a source for many people to get out and get exercise in a tranquil setting,” Harrison wrote. “This area was a live-saver for so many residents during Covid restrictions. This sanctuary needs to be preserved for the good of all and not the benefit of very few Palo Alto residents.”
Correction: The story had initially mischaracterized the elevation of the runway in Alternative 4. Under the proposed concept, the runway would be raised to roughly the same level as a proposed levee.
