From the Flight Deck

A new finished surface of the Marshfield Municipal Airport’s main ramp should start gleaming around the end of September.

Contractor Lawrence Lynch Corp. is focused on getting the P-154 subbase course and P-209 crushed aggregate base course finished – grading and  compacting – by about September 26, according to Nick Prescott, the resident project representative with Airport Solutions Group, the airport’s consulting firm who designed the project.

Nick also says plantings have gone into the pocket wetlands Lynch created last week.

P-209 based material is added to the ramp.

The ramp reconstruction project is part of the Land Use with Higher Potential Pollutant Loads (LUHPPL) initiative, a conditional order to the earlier runway program. It is a complete reconstruction and improvement of the main ramp area, and it is essential to ensure continued operational safety and environmental compliance, bringing the airport to current FAA standards.

This project concludes the airport-wide safety improvement project, which has seen various stages since planning began in 2002. The first phase of the safety improvement project saw the construction of a longer and wider (3,900 x 100 feet, from 3,000 x 75) runway, which allows aircraft to take off and land more safely.

P-154 provides a strong base to support the layers above it, typical in airports. It will fill 22 inches of the 32-inch box that Lynch dug out. A layer of P-209 goes over that to provide a stable foundation. Once that’s approved, then will come the new asphalt – the gleaming new surface everyone’ eagerly anticipating. What a difference that will be!

A bulldozer pushes P-209 material into place.

The project should be finished in mid- late October.

Enhancing airport safety is a high priority for the Marshfield Airport Commission and Shoreline Aviation, which manages the airport for the town, as well as the FAA and MassDOT’s Aeronautics Division. Those agencies fund and administer a grant, respectively, financing most of the project.