Waukesha County Airport Runway Closes Again, Four Days After $24M Reopening, Rerouting 23 Flights

WAUKESHA — Runway 10/28 at Waukesha County Airport closed again Tuesday morning, four days after reopening from a two-month, $24 million resurfacing project, when inspectors found a 40-foot stretch of the brand-new pavement had begun heaving near the Runway 10 threshold. The emergency repair is expected to keep the field's primary runway out of service through August 19, forcing the rerouting of 23 scheduled flights, primarily Cessna 172s and Piper Cub aircraft, to Milwaukee's Mitchell International and Timmerman airports.

Airport director Craig Deneen, who oversaw the original resurfacing project, said crews discovered the defect during a routine Monday-evening inspection, the first scheduled since the runway reopened August 2. He described the heaving as "roughly the size of a card table" and said engineers traced it to a subsurface moisture pocket the original project's drainage work was specifically designed to eliminate.

"It's essential to maintain safety standards, and this will be completed on schedule, we promise," Deneen said, reading from a printed statement he said had been prepared in under an hour.

Deneen's Binder, Reopened

Deneen confirmed the contingency binder assembled for the original closure, and left unopened for its entire two-month duration according to this newspaper's prior reporting, has now been retrieved from the filing cabinet where it was stored. He said 6 of its 14 tabbed sections, covering reroute procedures and diversion mapping, had proven directly usable, while a section on "Extended Closures Exceeding Four Months" remained untouched.

"We built that binder for a rainy day," Deneen said. "Turns out the rainy day was 4 days later."

The Reroute

Of the 23 rerouted flights, 15 have shifted to Timmerman Airport on Milwaukee's northwest side, a 19-mile diversion from Waukesha County Airport, while the remaining 8, mostly charter and instructional flights requiring longer runways, have moved to Mitchell International, 24 miles to the southeast. The airport estimates the average affected flight now adds 17 minutes of ground transportation time for passengers picked up at the wrong field.

Rick Fennimore, owner of Lakeland Air Charter, one of two charter operators based at Waukesha County Airport, said the timing added insult to injury for a business that had only just resumed its normal schedule. "We spent two months explaining to clients why we were driving them to Madison," Fennimore said. "Now I get to spend three weeks explaining why we're driving them to a different airport for a different reason. At some point a client's just going to ask if we own a plane."

"At some point a client's just going to ask if we own a plane."

— Rick Fennimore, owner, Lakeland Air Charter

Fennimore said his company has moved 5 clients through Timmerman since Tuesday, all of whom were told to add 20 minutes to their drive time and arrived, on average, 24 minutes late anyway.

The View From The Fence Line

The repair work drew its own review Wednesday from Bob Krueger, 72, the retired city Department of Public Works supervisor who evaluates area construction projects in a personal capacity, this time from the airport's public viewing area along Northview Road. Krueger, who has no jurisdiction over airfield pavement, said he came anyway "out of professional curiosity."

"That heave didn't happen because of moisture," Krueger said, squinting through the perimeter fence at the closed threshold. "That happened because somebody poured it in a hurry to make an August 2 ribbon-cutting. I've seen this before. You rush the cure, the cure rushes back."

Krueger said he would not be submitting a formal rating, as he does for lane closures, "out of respect for the fact that this one's got propellers involved," but noted informally that he'd give the original resurfacing job "a 4, tops."

What Comes Next

County public works liaison Denise Okafor said the repair, budgeted separately from the original $24 million project, would be completed using the same contractor under a warranty provision, at no additional cost to the county. She said the airport does not anticipate further disruptions once the section reopens.

"The runway needed the work the first time, and it needs this smaller fix now," Okafor said. "The fact that almost nobody is inconvenienced beyond 23 flights and 17 minutes is, if anything, a sign the warranty worked."

Deneen said the contingency binder would remain out of the filing cabinet "for the time being," and that a fifteenth tabbed section, covering "Closures Occurring Less Than One Week After a Prior Closure," was being drafted.