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 The Chronicle welcomes you online! Please feel free to respond to these editorials or letters to the editor by sending your letters to the editor.

We condense letters; most, as published, won't exceed 300 words. A letter must include the writer's name and city, which will be published, and an address and telephone number for verification, which will not be published. Writers may be limited to one letter every 30 days. Open letters, letters to third parties and poetry are not considered. Letters from people living outside the Chronicle's circulation area usually are not considered.

Develop Fort Gordon's airport

Web posted September 12, 2000

 Have a thought? Go to the @ugusta Forums.

Editor, The Chronicle

As a long-time Augusta resident and taxpayer, I would like to express my opinion on the Augusta Aviation commission's ``build it and they will come'' philosophy. To this concept, I say ``balderdash.''

There are others in the Central Savannah River Area who would and could benefit from an upgraded regional airport, but it is not the Augusta Regional Airport.

The airport commission cannot see across the railroad track in a westerly direction toward Fort Gordon. It is rumored that the new residents of Fort Gordon desire to build a long airstrip to accommodate the largest cargo plane in the current Air Force inventory as well as other large aircraft.

This rumored runway and accompanying support activities would be able to support rapid deployment on a global basis. Furthermore, this airstrip would allow for the expedient delivery of wounded military to Eisenhower Army Medical Center, versus the current 15-mile bus-ambulance trip from Bush Field.

An examination of any map of Eastern Georgia will reveal many divided highways such as Gordon Highway and Tobacco Road, which intercept with Dyess Parkway and Interstate 520 connecting with Interstate 20. These roadways should be comparable to Doug Barnard Highway and the opposite end of Tobacco Road leading from the current Bush Field.

Joint municipal-military airports have already been time-proven as successful operations. I offer two examples: Wichita Falls-Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas, and Charleston-Charleston Air Force Base in South Carolina. There are many more.

A close collaboration with Fort Gordon and the combining of military funding and projected moneys that the airport commission wants to spend on Bush Field would truly satisfy everyone's desires for a new terminal and runways.

Maybe if ``They build it somewhere else - like Fort Gordon - they will come.''

David G. Edmiston Sr., Grovetown