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This time state Rep. Bill Faison called me. He'd heard about the meeting on Coleman Loop Road in northern Orange where some property owners came together Sunday to organize against an airport.

Faison lives out there and says he was just floating a trial balloon when he suggested a new airport panel look out that way. Some neighbors wondered if the lawmaker was trying to deflect attention away from his own land. Faison said he was not and that any airport near Coleman Loop Road would impact his property. He says an airport there could lead to a bypass around Hillsborough that would solve that town's vexing traffic bottlenecks.

But Faison also said a site that far north is a long shot and is now suggesting a new location. He says the airport panel should look at a site parallel to I-40 between the new Durham Tech campus and the highway. That sounds a lot like the general area the county had eyed for a solid waste transfer station, which the town quickly rallied against. 

Faison said he's tossing out suggestions because "I would be surprised if an [airport] authority asked me where it ought to go." He says this new location would be within the 25 minute driving distance  the university says it needs to serve its medical fleet.

Not that residents believe that's what's driving the search for a new airport in Orange County. They say it's for alumni, a charge the university denies.

"If they've got a big donor flying in, it's a convenient airport," said resident Al Banes, who owns a local biotech company. "It will be couched in other terms, [as being] 'for the good of the university.'"

Residents are concerned because the airport authority will have the power to take land by eminent domain and UNC wants the panel's members picked by January.

"We got to get on our ponies here," Banes said.