Hartsfield Atlanta International

Airport ... I don't think there's any place name in the Southeast whose

mention evokes more mixed reactions.

It's the 500-pound gorilla

we love to hate.

We have the noise, air pollution,

land-grabbing, congestion and, now, water pollution. We also have the

tourism trade, the high-paying jobs, the economic generation and the ease

of travel.

Try to imagine life without

Hartsfield. Can't do it? Take a drive through Moultrie and that should

give you a fair idea.

All you folks who moved here

and then started showing up at county commission meetings to try and keep

anybody else from moving here ... you wouldn't be here.

Oh, but you're thinking how

nice that wonderful quality of life in Peachtree City or Brooks would

be without all the traffic and all the big boxes moving in? ...

But that wonderful quality

of life wouldn't be there either. It takes money to build cart paths,

and white table cloth restaurants don't generally move into sleepy little

towns.

As soon as somebody comes up

with a way to develop the perfect community, others discover it and move

in and then it's not perfect anymore. It's like the old disco joke: Nobody

goes there anymore ... it's too crowded.

For better and for worse, the

airport is the main engine that drives metro Atlanta, and it's a big factor

in all of north Georgia and, to a lesser extent, the surrounding states.

There have been voices crying

out for decades to remove this very precious commodity from the auspices

of the Atlanta municipal government, or at least to develop more layers

of oversight. In the past, no one was listening.

But momentum is growing for

the airport to be overseen by a state or regional authority. Republicans

are pushing hard for that this year and, after their efforts are rebuffed

The deicing problems that have

come to light, mainly as the result of persistence on the part of some

Fayette County water customers, has added fuel to the fire. Not only does

this situation reveal long-term problems with the handling of the airport,

but it also will put the city's new administration, already having to

make huge budget cuts, in a position of having to find many dollars maybe

millions to reconstruct the airport's deicing system.

Mayor Franklin may want to

seriously consider another alternative privatizing. It would solve a lot

of problems for Atlanta.

Even if privatized, the airport

could still be overseen by a statewide authority, it seems to my simple

mind.

The idea of such an authority

is not new. Retired state Rep. Dick Lane of East Point (now living in

Coweta County), pushed through legislation years ago creating just such

an authority. The governor just never bothered to fund it.

To expedite matters, all that

our legislators would have to do is dust off that old document, make whatever

changes seem beneficial, and activate the authority.

They'll probably prefer to

write their own bill, though, and that's fine too.

In any case, Hartsfield Airport

is too important to all of us, and, as we have seen recently, has too

great an impact on all of us, to be left alone to function as part of

the bureaucracy of a city that can't even pay its bills.

A regional authority is not

likely to be created as long as the old boy machine stays in power, but

if they squelch the idea, it truly should be a good campaign issue for

the wannabes.

It's time to cage this 500-pound

gorilla.