So we built another airport and that sank into the swamp..

And so forth and so on.

Airport officials were first publicly alerted to the sewer line problem at an Aviation Board meeting in May by Spann, who reported that subsidence had lifted up the 2,000-foot long pipe in enough places that officials needed to construct a new line that pumped out the sewage. The original pipe had relied upon gravity.

“It goes from the terminal to the lift station,” Thornton said in the recent interview. “It’s the main sewer line. It’s good we found it out now.”

Contractors discovered the problem – by running a camera through the pipe – before paving over it. But rather than replace the existing pipe, they are planning to build a new one over it.

“It's about a $7.5 million fix,” Spann told the board in July.

The contracting team hired to build the new terminal, a joint venture called Hunt Gibbs Boh Metro, took great care to try to prevent any subsidence of the notoriously unstable soils around the airport.

Every night for 44 weeks, 500 times a night, a truck would dump a load of sand in the area planned for the new terminal and roadway.

Despite these measures, the ground subsided perceptibly once construction workers began pouring concrete on the terminal apron, where the airplanes would move about.

Nothing new here. Just the regular occurring hazards of building on jello-land.  But, hey, maybe there is an upside. If a few more things sink unexpectedly, they might actually push the airport opening closer to the time when there is actually a road leading to it.