Tweed Steps Toward Expansion

Tweed New Haven Airport moved closer towards building a new, larger terminal in East Haven — by submitting environmental permit applications to state regulators, and by pushing back against an environmental-assessment appeal in D.C.

Tweed New Haven Airport Authority and The New Haven LLC, an affiliate of the airport management company Avports, announced the relevant permit applications in a Monday press release.

They have submitted inland and tidal wetland permit applications to the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) for an expansion project that will include the extension of Tweed’s main runway from 5,600 to 6,575 feet as well as the construction of a new four-gate, 80,000 square-foot East Terminal on the East Haven side of the Morris Cove airport property.

The improvements are designed to allow for increased airplane traffic at the already growing airport. Parking will be expanded to accommodate 4,000 vehicles at the new terminal. 

According to Monday’s press release, the airport has completed a ​“90% Runway Design Review and East Terminal 60% Design Review, which finalized the technical site and civil design components for the East Terminal construction and supporting infrastructure.”

Avports CEO Jorge Roberts celebrated the DEEP permit applications as an ​“important step forward” for an expansion first detailed in May 2021.

“The submission of this application and the associated public review process are both important milestones as we look to develop a new passenger terminal in an environmentally responsible manner,” Mayor Justin Elicker is quoted as saying in the press release.

Click here to read the press release and DEEP permit application in full.

Monday’s announcement comes a year and a half after the Federal Aviation Administration ruled that Tweed can move forward with this new terminal and runway extension. 

The environmental nonprofit Save The Sound and the Town of East Haven have appealed that Environmental Assessment approval in a case still working its way through the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Their appeal argues that the the federal review of the Environmental Assessment for this project was ​“inadequate” for a variety of reasons, including by not considering the actual number of passengers this expansion would bring to Tweed.

On April 25, Avports and the airport authority filed briefs in that case to preserve the feds’ approval. ​“FAA properly determined that the insignificant impacts to wetlands and floodplains can be adequately mitigated, while leaving the precise details of the mitigation to the permitting agencies,” the airport authority’s brief reads. ​“Petitioners’ counterfactual criticism of FAA for not examining the environmental impacts of a potential future project that the Authority is not currently advancing because of those very potential environmental impacts fails to show that FAA’s Finding of No Significant Impact/Record of Decision is defective. The Petition should be denied.”

All of this comes as the airport has seen a surge in commercial air traffic since November 2021 thanks to direct routes flown from Tweed by Avelo Airlines and, most recently, Breeze Airlines.

Meanwhile, some Morris Cove, East Haven, and Branford neighbors have consistently raised concerns about more airplane traffic out of Tweed — and the resulting loud noises, air pollution, and vehicle traffic — hurting their quality of life.