Holley
Mountain Airpark Serves the
Needs of Van Buren County
and all of North Central
Arkansas.
"A lot of
people say, 'What does an airport have
to do with me?'," Jim Collom, a
commissioner with the Clinton Municipal
Airport Commission, addressed questions
that, he said, are posed to him
repeatedly by local folks. "Well let me
tell you, to anyone that lives in this
area who could have an accident or might
suffer severe illness, an airport has a
factor in their life.''
"During bad
weather," Collom explained, "a
Med-Flight helicopter or aircraft could
not land at our Municipal Airport or the
hospital heli-pad. You will not get to
Little Rock, other than by ground
transportation, then." Emphasizing that
there is "nothing wrong" with the
municipal facility, Collom said that
according to everyone who knows it best,
it is a fine airport that serves a
valuable purpose and satisfies many
local needs. But, the geographic
location of the city airport does pose
one significant problem.
Being ''down in the valley'' is a
real drawback when it comes to being
equipped for an Instrument Approach
Landing, which would permit aircraft to
land more safely during times of low
visibility by relying on instruments in
the cockpit of the aircraft. This is
especially relevant at the Clinton
airport because the facility is
routinely closed due to ground fog that
tends to lay in the valleys or along the
rivers and lakes. ''That same fog also
covers the heli-pad at the hospital many
damp mornings,'' Collom added.
This, said Collom, means that accident victims --
whose lives may hang in the balance of time-critical
factors -- face the amplified risk of being denied
medical emergency airlift services simply because
the city airport and hospital heli-pad could be
''socked in.'' And this is a problem that, Collom
said, is about to be resolved.
As one of a small
group of people who have been instrumental in the
development of a new airport facility on Holley
Mountain, Collom explained the objectives of having
a public-use runway and heli-pad there. He said that
the 4800' blacktop runway, with its 1270' elevation,
which officially opened to serve the public late
last year, seldom experiences the ''lake fog''
hazard that routinely closes the Clinton airport.
"We're glad to be able to provide this kind of
public service, even though we're not a publicly
funded airport,'' Collom said. He added that because
the Holley Mountain runway is 800 ft. longer than
the Clinton city airport, business jets, like the
Falcon 20 that recently touched-down atop the
mountain, can land in Van Buren County now. ''It's a
good hour drive from here to another airport with
that can handle larger planes like this," he said.
''And our airspace is designated 'public use',''
Collom continued. ''That's how the airport is marked
on the aeronautic charts. That is a choice that we
made because we want to be good neighbors and make a
valuable offering to our community.''
Collom elaborated that he and other members of
the Holley Mountain Airpark Property Owners
Association felt that having a runway ''above the
clouds'' was beneficial to everyone, but it just
wasn't enough. So, with a will to make the facility
an even greater asset to medical rescue needs and at
the same time increase the attractiveness of Van
Buren County to potential industrial development,
steps were taken to gain FAA approval for Instrument
Landing Approach.
"Tyler Engineering, in Greenbrier, is processing
the Holley Mountain paperwork,'' Collom said. But,
he noted, there is a lot more to gleaning approval
than paperwork. As example, Collom cited a number of
FAA requirements, including special runway and
approach lighting and the removal of obstacles such
as rock outcroppings or trees all along the runway
easement. In addition, the Greenbrier engineering
firm was responsible for doing the topographical GPS
survey and ''master plan'' for the Holley Mountain
runway, which pinpoints the latitude, longitude and
elevation of the landing strip to within
four-hundred-thousandths of an inch.
''The paperwork on all this was delivered to the
State Aeronautical Commission July 18,'' Collom
credited. ''From there it goes to the FAA district
office in Fort Worth, Texas.''
He said
that all-in-all to buy and clear the
land, engineer and build the runway, and
install safety equipment that meets FAA
standards has been quite costly and
''truly an educational process.'' He
also noted that the development has been
accomplished with no cost to the general
public at all.
'You could
actually land and load a King Air type
transport aircraft here and fly directly
to any large health facility such as the
Mayo Clinic,'' added J.F. Williams, one
of the original developers of the Holley
Mountain project. ''When you do these
kinds of things, you hope in a way that
they are never needed,'' JoAnn Collom,
who has also been instrumental in the
development of Holley Mountain Airpark,
summarized. ''You hope that no one ever
has to have a Med-Flight to Little Rock,
but at the same time we all know it is
inevitable. And if this facility saves
even one life, well then, everything
that's been accomplished has been
worthwhile.''
