As negotiations for a new air traffic control service at the San Carlos Airport continue this week, the San Mateo County airport is considering the temporary use of unstaffed tower procedures.

The airport, which goes by the three-letter code SQL, is preparing to transition to a new air traffic service. The Federal Aviation Administration awarded a new contract to Robinson Aviation (RVA), but the contract does not include enough pay to account for the high cost of living in the San Francisco Bay Area, according to airport manager Gretchen Kelly.

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Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.