Blue Mountains City Council has chosen fight over flight, committing to campaign against the recently revealed draft flight plans for Western Sydney International (WSI) airport.
Create a free account to read this article
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The decision, moved as a mayoral matter of urgency at the council meeting on June 27, will also see the council organise a public information meeting in Glenbrook Park within the next 90 days to keep the community informed.
The measures are in response to the release of an online flight path checking tool, which shows where planes from the WSI airport will fly and how much noise can be expected.
The tool shows flight paths planned over several villages in the Mountains, including Medlow Bath, Linden, Faulconbridge, and Blaxland.
Many councillors stood in opposition to the announced flight paths at the council meeting.
Blue Mountains mayor Mark Greenhill, who moved the mayoral matter of urgency, described the flight paths as "appalling" and told the Gazette: "In my opinion, putting 24/7 flight paths over one of only two cities in the world wholly enclosed in a World Heritage Area is demonstrably wrong.
"No sensible policymaker should even contemplate that."
Deputy mayor Romola Hollywood described the situation south of Woodford as "planes circling like bees", whilst Cr Nyree Fisher dubbed the plans a "kick in the guts".
Cr Brent Hoare declared his anger, saying: "We must have rocks in our heads as a society to be doing this stuff."
The matter of urgency was passed, with the only opposing councillors being Roza Sage and Kevin Schreiber.
Cr Sage said on the night that she was unable to support the full motion due to disagreeing with some parts of it, including continued focus on the airport itself, and possible spending involved.
"I have concerns about spending money on a campaign. Considering that we will be discussing paid parking, which is going to be revenue raising," she said.
"So, I'm a little bit torn, and I really can't support the full motion, because there's just a couple of bits that I don't support, even though I do support the vast majority of it."
The council will write to the minister voicing concerns, via the office of Federal Member for Macquarie Susan Templeman.
"I will work in partnership with Susan Templeman MP on this. As well as [Blue Mountains MP] Trish Doyle. We are absolutely committed to defending the Blue Mountains in concert with our community," said Cr Greenhill.
The council also voted to make a detailed submission on the drafts to the Environmental Impact Statement for the airport later in the year.
