Tag Archives: FAA

Stop the Fence at Tule Lake

Join the growing movement and sign the petition to Stop the Fence at Tule Lake. More than 500 people have now sent emails via the Change.org online petition sponsored by the Tule Lake Committee, urging the FAA to deny an 8-foot high fence around the local airport that is evidently used mostly for local crop-dusting planes.

Outline of proposed fence at Tulelake Airport
The outlines of the Tule Lake National Monument and of the Tulelake Municipal Airport are superimposed on a wartime photo of the Tule Lake Segregation Center. You can see how a fence around the airport would destroy the physical and emotional integrity of the site. Artwork by Evan Johnson.

Tule Lake is ground zero for the government and JACL program to segregate dissidents and so-called “troublemakers” inside America’s WW2 concentration camps. Conscience and the Constitution touches upon this. Tule Lake is the last great untold story in Japanese America. Several films about the Segregation Center are in the works. I urge the FAA to deny the fence and keep the landscape and horizon of the Tule Lake site unbroken, and protect the physical and historic integrity of the site for visitors and filmmakers.

Petition backer Evan Johnson questions claims that the fence is even needed for aviation. He writes, “I don’t get the motivation for the fence – which serves no realistic safety function. This airport is essentially the crop-duster operation, essentially serving one man.” Johnson also provides the following research:

  • Percentage of aircraft wildlife strikes that are deer strikes: 2
  • Number of deer strikes in California between 1982–2000: 13
  • Number of reported strikes of any wildlife anywhere in Modoc County: 0
  • Month during which most deer strikes occur: November
  • Time of day at which deer strikes are most likely: Dusk
  • Number of owners with registered aircraft at Tulelake airport: 3
  • Number of aircraft which they currently registered: 10
  • Number of those registered to Nick Macy: 8
  • Amount of money in farm subsidies paid by the USDA to Modoc County in 2010: $464,000
  • Amount one registered owner of a single plane at Tulelake airport received between 1995–2010: $298,792
  • Estimated average cost to build 16,000 feet of 8′ chain link fence: $303,840
  • To build that fence topped with barbed wire: $343,840
  • Number of times per day the FAA recommends walking an airport fence circumference for inspection: 1
  • Number of employees at the Tulelake airport who will be doing this: 0

So please sign the petition at Change.org. Here again is the link. Also, go the Facebook page for “Stop the Fence at Tule Lake” and LIKE it. Thanks.