[Updated] FAA Cancels Ramona Airport Traffic Control Tower Closure

Updated at 2:15 p.m. May 10 with comment from Supervisor Dianne Jacob.

After the shifting of funds and resistance from numerous residents and even local politicians, Ramona Airport's traffic control tower will remain open and operating through the fiscal year, the Federal Aviation Administration announced Friday.

The tower was one of 149 across the nation to close come June, but a recent shift of $253 million from other accounts in the Department of Transportation have saved it and the other towers at risk.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced today that the department has determined that the recently enacted Reducing Flight Delays Act of 2013 will allow the FAA to transfer sufficient funds to end employee furloughs and keep the 149 low activity contract towers—which include those in Ramona, San Diego, Pacoima, Lancaster, Fullerton and Riverside—open for the "remainder of fiscal year 2013," which ends Sept. 30.

County Board of Supervisor Dianne Jacob has urged residents in Ramona numerous times to speak out against the closure, encouraging locals to write to the FAA in protest of the closure.

Jacob said the cancellation of the closure through September is a "step in the right direction," but a long-term budget fix is still needed.

“Closing the Ramona tower at the end of September would endanger our region when we need the air traffic facility the most," the supervisor said in a statement. “Many of San Diego County’s biggest and deadliest wildfires, including the 2003 and 2007 firestorms, have started in our backcountry in the fall.”

The talk of the 149 tower closures came in March, when $637 million in cuts required under the federal budget sequestration.

Originally scheduled to close on April 7, the FAA announced the delay of the Ramona Airport tower closure, pushing the four-week phase out of the 149 towers back to June.

The FAA said $10 million of the newly-shifted funds will go toward reducing cuts and delays in core NextGen programs and will allocate approximately $11 million to partially restore the support of infrastructure in the national airspace system.