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The
City of Kingston Has Become a Toxic Dumping Ground For Aviation Noise
There are many people
who are getting physically and psychologically ill
because of Moorabbin Airport and aircraft noise. And the
current
airport Master Plan champions even more aircraft
activity.
This is a city which will certainly become known for its
overhead
drone. There are other cities in the world where people put
up
with industrial drone, but they tend to be in developing
countries.
The
general suggestion from the Federal Government on aircraft noise issues
is to
keep residential development away from the airport and put insulation
into homes already affected. In essence many thousands of
people will be expected to install special dense insulation into their
roof cavities and double glaze their windows and
brace themselves
for more noise, so that a privileged few and a host of overseas trainee
pilots can pursue their aviation
interests.
And since the airport caters almost exclusively for
recreational
and training flights, the poison is delivered twice because there is
considerably more aerial activity on nice sunny days and on the
weekends when residents
might reasonably expect some measure of outdoor amenity.
It's
a dreadful situation that residents in badly effected areas say they
welcome fog, high winds, low cloud and storms because
it
gives them a small break from the incessant low flying aircraft.
Between
the
out dated twin engine planes, the trainee pilots and the exceptionally
noisy
helicopters whose pilots seem to think they have
an entitlement to fly low over our homes, it's an
amenity crisis.
If it were any other industrial setting the EPA would be on
the case, but
of course aviation comes with endless immunity.
Naturally there are
aviation codes dealing with noisy old planes and helicopters, but if
you want
to get around the codes you simply make an application and Bob's your
Uncle, in
no time at all your out dated crop duster will be joining the rest of
the aerial
crowd thronging up and down the Chelsea, Aspendale and
Mordialloc coast
line and performing endless circuits around the airport.
.
Click
here to read about aircraft noise and health problems.
For
Everyone, There's More Noise To come . . .
Even if the noise is tolerable now, brace
yourself for things to come. If the Airport traffic is
doubled or
the mix of
aircraft changes to include more low flying helicopters or more
regional airlines or corporate jets are introduced, or specific flight
corridors are installed with the proposed reclassification of the
airport, it'll be quite a
different story? There will come a time when we will all wish
we
had taken a keener interest when we had a chance to make a
difference.
Imagine for a
moment that it does get worse and you decide to move because you can't
take it any longer, but the problem has become so public and so obvious
that interest in your neighbourhood has plummeted
to a point where you find it hard to sell
your
home? Imagine that the City of Kingston has become the
laughing
stock of the rest of Melbourne with its droning skies and lackluster
appreciation for what might otherwise have been a splendid coastal
amenity!
Can you visualise what it might be like in a few
years from now having a BBQ with friends and stopping
your conversation every half minute or so to wait for
a helicopter
or
plane to pass overhead?
Sad
But True . . .
If
you decide you are sick up to the back teeth with the sound of planes
and helicopters you can always call the Air Services Australia Noise
Line and we encourage you to do so. Here is the number 1800
802
584.
The only problem is that they are in Sydney and
they don't actually do anything about the noise they just keep records
of the complaints.
And
there aren't any noise monitors anywhere near
Moorabbin Airport even though you will hear terms like Noise Exposure Forecast
(ANEF). It's almost as if ANEF is supposed to give
you the impression that there is some well thought out environmental
protection which deals with unfair and excessive aircraft
noise. Don't hold your breath ANEF has absolutely nothing to
do
with environmental protection it is just an obscure long term
noise forecast which has been calculated by the airport.
ANEF only vaguely correlates with the aircraft
noise that
people experience
on a daily basis and if the airport wants to put more aircraft into the
sky it just increases the ANEF.
You
might also encounter another term for ANEF which was adopted
by
the
City of Kingston, it's called the Airport Environs Overlay. Again it
has
nothing to do with sensible levels of noise, it is just a Council noise
map which looks like the ANEF noise contour map.
Aside from
the ANEF being a very blunt instrument there is a very insidious side
to
this long term noise forecast which people forget about.
If
the airport
decides to continue putting more aircraft into the sky and continues to
increase the ANEF then the noise contours will continue to spread out
over the map of our city. If you wake up one day and find
that
your home
is now within a contour you can expect almost instant devaluation of
your home. You will also find that you have a
number of
serious restrictions on what you
can do in terms of subdivision or building works on your property.
At the very least
the ANEF calculation needs to be open to much greater public scrutiny
and
ideally it is something which should be determined
independently
rather than by
the airport. There is also a very urgent need for a proper
noise
index which is about environmental protection and
which
places restrictions on aircraft compromising urban amenity.
There
is more than enough sky and sparsely populated areas in Australia for
urban communities to have confidence in a basic standards of ground
amenity particularly in densely populated municipalities.
If
you want to understand some of the forgotten implications
of ANEF
read what happened at the Melbourne Airport a few years ago.
Keep
in mind that planes over the Melbourne Airport are very disciplined and
do not wander all over the place like they do above the City
of
Kingston. So the Melbourne Airport ANEF and noise contours
are much
more meaningful and relevant - click here
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