The Black Hills region's fire dispatch center will move from Rapid City Regional Airport to the Forest Service's Mystic Ranger District complex in south Rapid City if funding in a Senate appropriations bill survives intact.

The move, not scheduled until 2013, would end a yearslong wrangle among the dispatch center, the city airport and the Federal Aviation Administration, which said the center did not qualify as an aeronautical use and should not be located so close to aviation facilities.

The Senate bill, which includes $1.9 million to build a new headquarters for the Northern Great Plains Interagency Dispatch Center, was passed Tuesday by the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior and Environment, according to Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D.

The money would fund building a stand-alone dispatch center on the Mystic Ranger District property off South U.S. Highway 16.

The current dispatch center, which became operational in 2003, combines staff from the South Dakota Wildland Fire Suppression Division, the Forest Service and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The Forest Service and the state each have three full-time permanent staff members at the center. The BIA has one.

During fire season, those ranks often swell to 20-30 staff members, according to Black Hills National Forest deputy supervisor Dennis Jaeger.

The state initially resisted the move, partly because it spent about $1.5 million to revamp the old airport terminal for the dispatch center. The interagency center was a project pushed by then-Gov. Bill Janklow to improve responses to Black Hills region wild fires.

But the FAA's determination that the dispatch center didn't meet the definition of aeronautical use could have jeopardized federal funding for the airport, said Joe Lowe, coordinator of the state wildlife division.

"In the best interests of the airport and the citizens of Rapid City we chose not to carry the issue any further," Lowe said Tuesday.

Lowe said if the funding survives legislative hurdles, much work will remain to draw up plans and construct the building by 2013, when the center's lease at the airport ends.

But Lowe said he's happy about the move to the Forest Service property. "We work well with our federal partners," he said.

Jaeger said the dispatch center, even on the ranger district complex, would continue to maintain its base at the airport for air tankers that fly in to battle fires here.

"Of all the options we looked at, this was the most cost effective place to put that building," Jaeger said. "We own the land and the infrastructure is already there."

Airport executive director Cameron Humphres said he was disappointed to see the dispatch center leave.

"They've been a really good partner to the airport," he said. "But I'm encouraged by the fact that the Forest Service was able to put together that money to provide them a good facility at the Mystic ranger station."

Humphres said the airport board had hoped to keep the dispatch center at the airport but at a location away from aviation use areas such as runways, taxiways and ramps. The current dispatch center sits right next to aircraft ramps, Humphres said.

"It comes down to anytime this airport accepts federal money through the FAA we have to live by some grant assurances. One of those says we won't have nonaeronautical activities in aeronautical-use areas," he said.

Humphres said the next question is where to put State Radio dispatch, which also is housed in the old terminal. "If we can find a place for them and they would like to stay, that would be a good fit."