I disagree

[mundens]

No Right Turn recently said this :

Christchurch International Airport Protection Bill (Clayton Cosgrove): this bill is a response to noise concerns about Christchurch International Airport by local residents. It would "resolve" those concerns by stomping all over them. The bill would ensure that no provision of the RMA could be used to limit the operation of Christchurch airport on the basis of aircraft noise, and require the Christchurch City Council to issue a new District Plan prohibiting "noise sensitive activities" (meaning residential development, schools, hospitals, or pretty much anything involving people living) within a moving boundary which will expand as the airport gets louder. From the maps on the Christchurch City Council's CityPlan site some of this area is already occupied by residential housing (see maps 30 and 31); no compensation would be payable for any loss resulting from this.

This is an awful bill. Its so awful, National might even vote for it. The only thing stopping them is that the victims are in Gerry Brownlee's electorate

I have to disagree.  What No Right Turn is obviously unaware of is that the people who are complaining about the airport noise moved into the area long after the airport was already in operation, and have since being trying to use the RMA for purposes that it was not intended for, i.e. : for improving their own land values at great  expense to the general public.

It's not about Christchurch airport getting louder, I suspect that bit is in there just so that there is something to that can be removed from the bill, a sacrificial clause, as it were, because aircraft technology is not producing louder aircraft.

What it's about is residential areas expanding and encroachng on the airport's pre-existing exclusion zone, and then home-owners and land developers, who are fully aware of the noise and presence of the airport when they purchased or built there, or when they started subdividing the land around the airport, retro-actively trying to shut-down the airport to improve their own property values. Those residential areas on the map were all created and developed many years after the airport was built and went into operation

We had exactly the same issue with RNZAF Wigram. The air force base had been there since 1911, yet we had people living in houses built next to it in the 1980's phoning up and complaining about the noise!  Luckily being a military operation we could politely tell them to fuck off, bluntly saying if you don't like the noise, why the fuck did you build there?

Why should the greedy home-owners and land developers be allowed to force the Christchurch Airport to close or relocate, lining their pockets because they bought cheap unwanted land (because it was close to an airport)  which would suddenly become worth a lot more if the airport was closed down, at great expense to the community at large?

That's what Clayton Cosgrove is trying to prevent with his bill.