With the necessary $6.9 million now in hand, the Martha’s Vineyard airport is ready to comply with an order of Congress to shift its runway 300 feet to the northeast.

More than 90 per cent of the funding comes from the Federal Aviation Administration.

United States airports are required to meet new safety standards which mandate a minimum safety zone on each side of any runway; at least 1,000 feet at both ends and 500 feet on each side. Reacting to several incidents in which commercial aircraft overran runways, Congress set a deadline for the requirement in 2005.

The south end of the Vineyard runway is 300 feet too close to the road to meet those standards.

The deadline for the changes is 2015, but with funding ready, airport manager Sean Flynn expects the work to be done well ahead of schedule.

The work will not extend any length to the 5,504-foot runway. Instead 300 feet of asphalt will be ground up from the point of the runway nearest the Edgartown-West Tisbury Road and moved to the Barnes Road end.

This will give the runway the requisite buffer zone, but it’s not as easy as just laying some asphalt and grinding up some more, according to Mr. Flynn. Several systems at the airport need to make the shift along with the runway.

The taxiways will be moved, along with lighting on both the taxiways and runways. The airport will take the opportunity to upgrade the runway lights and the taxiway.

Antennae, part of the airport’s Instrument Landing System used to perform a function known as radio glide in poor conditions, will also be moved. “We’ve been doing little pieces and start the main work in September,” Mr. Flynn said. The project will hold for the winter and recommence in the spring.

Though the manager did not feel the safety of the airport is compromised by its positioning — indeed the changes will not go into effect until after President Obama makes use of the runway during a visit scheduled next month — he said the changes will be beneficial.

“We’re updating several areas, and those are things that are meaningful to the airport,” Mr. Flynn said.

The runway has existed in its current form since the early 1970s, when it was extended to accommodate jets from Northeast Airlines, following a lengthy 1969 battle over the prospect of jet traffic and the proposed flattening of a geologically-produced bump in the Edgartown-West Tisbury Road. The bump was referred to by project engineer Maurice Freedman as a “sub-standard bump,” which led to a bumper sticker, Save Our Sub-Standard Bump. Opponents succeeded in delaying the project, but both extension and bump-flattening were ultimately performed.