Hollywood Burbank Airport selects consultant to prepare environmental impact statement

Hollywood Burbank Airport is now about two years away from finding out whether a replacement terminal on an area known as the B-6 parcel will be feasible to build.

The Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority unanimously voted on Monday to award a contract to RS&H California Inc. to prepare an environmental impact statement for the 14-gate terminal project.

The authority will be paying the consulting firm roughly $2.8 million to work on the report, which will study the findings compiled by airport officials, so far, and determine whether the project to construct a 355,000-square-foot terminal on the site meets the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, standards, said Patrick Lammerding, the airport’s deputy executive director of planning and development.

“An [environmental impact statement] is the stringent level of NEPA review, so it works a little bit differently than the other levels of review,” he said.

Lammerding said the airport will have no involvement in the preparation of the statement, other than paying for it.

Although the authority put out a request for qualifications to find a firm to work on this portion of the terminal project, Lammerding said the Federal Aviation Administration was responsible for conducting the interviews with RS&H and Mead & Hunt, Inc., the other consultant that responded to the request, and selecting which business would be the most qualified to prepare the statement.

Once the environmental impact statement is completed, it will be submitted and reviewed by the FAA, which will ultimately decide if the project is feasible on the B-6 parcel, which was the former site of Lockheed Corp.’s Skunk Works program.

Lammerding said the entire process to prepare the statement and have it reviewed by the FAA is optimistically expected to be completed in 22 to 24 months. However, he told commissioners the process usually takes about 36 months.

So far, the airport authority has hit no speed bumps on its way to getting permission to build the replacement terminal.

In February, the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board approved the airport’s human health-risk assessment of the B-6 site, stating that constructing a terminal on that location poses few to no health risks for construction workers or those who will be working at the airport.

Lammerding said airport officials cannot go any further with the project until the environmental impact statement is completed and approved by the FAA.

Should the federal agency give the authority the green light at the end of the review process, airport officials will be able to start working on the concept validation of the facility and a cost estimate for the project.

anthonyclark.carpio@latimes.com

Twitter: @acocarpio