A surface radar system will be operating at Baltimore-Washington International Airport by early April, enabling air traffic controllers to monitor movements of aircraft and other vehicles on runways and taxiways, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman said last night.
The antenna for the system will be installed atop the airport's control tower on Dec. 13, FAA spokesman Rudolph E. Nash told about 60 people a meeting of the airport Neighbors' Committee.
"This is going to help us immensely" with safety on runways and taxiways, Mr. Nash said.
On Nov. 22, two people were killed on a runway at St. Louis' Lambert Airport when their small private plane strayed into the path of an MD-80 aircraft with 132 people aboard.
Nobody on the larger plane was seriously hurt.
BWI is also in line to receive a terminal Doppler weather radar system within the next two years, Mr. Nash said.
"It will give us better reporting of hazardous weather as it's moving through the area," he said.
"This is stuff that we actually don't have a very good handle on right now with the radar that we have."
Terminal Doppler weather radar can detect wind shear and severe down drafts called microbursts.
LTC A USAir DC-9 plane that crashed in a thunderstorm July 2 at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport in North Carolina, killing 37, encountered a severe microburst before it went down.
Mr. Nash said the Doppler radar tower would be several miles from the airport, west of Interstate 97 near Benfield Boulevard. He said it would emit only as much energy as a microwave oven.
In 1992, the state of Maryland denied the FAA permission to build a 131-foot wind-shear radar tower near a private school in Crownsville because parents' concerns about potential harmful effects of low-level radiation had not been answered.
Also last night, Michael C. West, associate administrator for the Maryland Aviation Administration, said the agency hopes to buy the Ridgewood Mobile Home Park in Harmans this spring.
The MAA has planned to buy the park for years because it is within the zone around BWI considered too noisy for residential use.
Mr. West said the MAA will hear in January if it will receive a federal grant to fund the relocation project. If the grant comes through, he said, the MAA should be able to begin relocating the 150 families living in the mobile home park by July.
The relocation project will be managed by experienced consultants, he said, and could take up to two years.
When the relocations begin, he said, residents will be paid enough to move into "decent, safe and sanitary housing" elsewhere.
"The choice of where you move to is completely yours," Mr. West told the audience, which included several Ridgewood residents.