St. Andrew Airport raises safety concerns over planned retention pond

Officials with St. Andrews Airport north of Winnipeg are worried that a retention pond being proposed as part of a housing development in the area would attract Canada geese and other birds that could collide with aircraft.

Plans for the retention pond are part of a proposal for the residential development, which would be located just north of the airport.

The pond itself would be about 5.6 kilometres directly north of the main runway, said Craig Skonberg, the airport's executive director.

The eight-acre pond is designed to address the risk of overland flooding, as the development is slated for a low-lying area.

But Skonberg said the retention pond would attract birds to the area, and that could create safety hazards for the smaller aircraft that commonly use the airport.

"It baits the birds to that area, and particularly in the configuration that they have — the slopes and the location — it would attract feeding and … nesting for both Canada geese and ring-billed gulls, which are a couple of the more dangerous species for aircraft because of the size and the speed that they travel at," he said Thursday.

'It's like a cannonball'

Skonberg said collisions between birds and aircraft don't happen very often at St. Andrews, but they have the potential to bring planes down.

"When that sort of thing does happen, it's like a cannonball," he said.

"A Canada goose can weigh 20, 30 pounds and the plane is travelling at, you know, whatever speed it is and then the goose itself may be travelling at a certain speed, so it's just the same thing as a cannonball."

Skonberg said Canada geese have generally avoided St. Andrews Airport so far, thanks to the birds' current migration paths as well as ongoing efforts by airport staff to scare birds off the property.

"We have a program where we keep them off the airport, and I don't imagine that these housing developers are going to have a program of the same sort of thing," he said.

Skonberg said he would like to see changes to the slope of the retention pond and long grass around it, which would make it more difficult for birds to nest in the area.

However, he said officials have learned the developers are not adopting those changes.

CBC News has requested comment from the developers, but there was no response as of Thursday afternoon.