Houses in Warwick just east of Runway 34 at Green Airport. The airport wants to expand the runway, currently 7,166 feet, to 8,700 feet, which would displace residents in this neighborhood.

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The Providence Journal / ANDREW DICKERMAN

The Federal Aviation Administration has rejected a request from Warwick Mayor Scott Avedisian to consider a shorter runway-expansion option for T.F. Green Airport, saying the mayor’s proposal would needlessly restrict the number of passengers the airport could send on cross-country flights.

By shaving 400 feet from the proposed 8,700-foot runway, Green Airport could lose up to 87,500 potential passengers annually, LaVerne F. Reid, manager of the FAA’s regional Airports Division, said in a four-page letter to Avedisian. The cost savings and environmental advantages, she said, would be negligible.

“An 8,300-foot runway would accommodate 79 percent of the West Coast passenger demand,” Reid said in the letter, sent late last month.

The decision means the FAA has now limited the runway expansion proposals to two: the 8,700-foot expansion and a 9,350-foot option. The runway is currently 7,166 feet, restricting transcontinental flights and trips to European destinations east of Dublin and London.

But the approval process will still be complex and lengthy, promising further delays to a project that many business leaders see as crucial to the state’s economic development and to reversing steep declines in passenger traffic at Green Airport.

Discussions of a runway expansion have gone on for more than eight years. The FAA does not plan to issue a draft environmental impact statement, the next step in the process, for at least a year, and a final report is not expected until late 2009.

“We just want to keep it moving forward and hope the timeline can be somewhat condensed,” Patti Goldstein, spokeswoman for the Rhode Island Airport Corporation, the agency that runs Green Airport, said yesterday. “It’s important to us that this study moves forward.”

In the interim, airport officials say improvements to the terminal will compensate for lost revenue tied to passenger traffic. But supporters of the expansion say a longer runway allowing new nonstop routes — not new businesses in the terminal or a new rail station — is the key to growing Green.

“It’s a simple solution,” said Lawrence Bonoff, 58, the former owner of the Warwick Musical Theater and a supporter of airport expansion. “I could have had the best parking lot, the best greeters, the best food service. But if the show is not what they want to see, they ain’t going to come.”

The dispute over the shorter runway option is the latest skirmish in a dogged campaign by airport opponents to block or greatly curtail any expansion.

That effort is led mainly by Warwick residents whose homes, businesses and roadways are in the runway’s path, and by Avedisian, who would see his city’s tax revenue drop if an extended runway replaces homes and shops.

THIS SUMMER, Avedisian called on the FAA to reduce the length of the shorter expansion option, hoping to restrict the reach of the bulldozers.

In a letter to John Silva, the FAA’s regional environmental program manager, Avedisian argued that the Boeing 737-500, a commercial jetliner that requires 8,700 feet, is not fuel efficient and is increasingly less popular among airlines flying from the East Coast to Los Angeles, San Francisco or San Diego. The FAA has used that aircraft in its analysis of runway alternatives.

Yesterday, Avedisian said he plans to send new objections to the FAA later this month. “They can accomplish 90 percent of what they’re looking for by going to 8,300. We think it’s silly not to at least hold that somewhere in the mix,” he said.

“When we write back, we will delineate why we think the 8,300 is a better option,” Avedisian said. “We don’t expect to get very far, but that’s been this process all along.”

Although Avedisian said he was discouraged by the latest setback, he and other opponents have succeeded in at least one thing: delaying the expansion.

The FAA, facing criticism from opponents, has tweaked the proposals several times over nearly a decade of debate. The final two options will continue to face scrutiny.

Over the next year, FAA consultants will design 30 percent of both options — plans that will be used for the draft environmental impact statement that assess the potential impacts on neighborhoods, roadways, rivers and streams near the airport.

Prior to its publication, the FAA will hold a public hearing to solicit input that could be included in the final report. Eventually, the agency will issue a “record of decision” recommending one of the expansion options.

Airport managers are free to ignore that advice, although if the FAA supports the project, it has pledged to contribute $150 million, or about 30 percent of the projected cost.

“You still have to comply with all the federal laws” specifying required studies and public hearings, FAA spokesman Jim Peters said. But, he added, “if this kind of a project anywhere enjoys public support, both at the community level and at the official level, they probably move a little more quickly.”

Avedisian has criticized those behind the expansion for repeatedly altering their rationale for the project, complicating efforts to challenge it. But the pace of the effort has also presented a challenge for supporters, who have found it more difficult to remain mobilized than, say, homeowners facing a wrecking ball.

In 2004, Bryant University President Ronald K. Machtley and Alan G. Hassenfeld, chairman of Pawtucket-based toymaker Hasbro Inc., formed a pro-expansion group called the Go Green Alliance. It has all but disbanded.

“It is hard to maintain any momentum when they’re setting the time table,” George H. Nee, secretary-treasurer of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO and a former member of the alliance, said yesterday.

“We are still very much supportive of the runway project and somewhat frustrated by the pace of things,” said Nee, who is also a member of the board of directors for the agency that runs the Rhode Island Convention Center. “It’s important to attracting and keeping businesses in Rhode Island and also for tourism.”

Bethany E. Costello, a spokeswoman for the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce, said the Go Green Alliance could be resurrected if the expansion project needs a boost.

In surveys, Costello said, members of the Chamber have “overwhelmingly” endorsed the project. “We’re going to support this project no matter how long it takes,” she said. “It’s an economic development issue.”

bgedan@projo.com