Lets be frank - the EIS was never going to give opponents the ammunition they need to highlight anything bad about the airport development. No EIS report has ever blocked a project that I'm aware of. Logically anyone writing the report is not going to bite the hand that feeds them and contracted them to write it; this is especially so since the Government as said earlier announced that this was going to be the airport site and made the commitment before the report was even commissioned.
It's still worth looking at however; it may illuminate us as to who will be the winners and losers from the proposal. To be honest it's the first real bit of information we have received about the airport that relates to the most current proposal. It's the main reason I haven't written for so long; there just wasn't the information out there to comment on.
In any case the draft EIS as released seems to give us information on preliminary flight paths and what they see the noise impact to be from their point of view.
What's interesting to me is that the flight paths chosen potentially impact quite a number of people particularly in the lower Blue Mountains where most of the approaching flight paths seem to overlap. They are also somewhat different from what was proposed in the previous EIS last time Badgerys was announced. Departing flight paths this time around go over St Marys, St Clair, Erskine Park, Blacktown and the Penrith CBD. They seem to think however there won't be noise impact that's worth mentioning from this which for me seems quite strange and goes against intuition. In fact comparing actual exposures like I did in previous posts (see my North Ryde comparison on a previous post) I would imagine the noise in decibels to have been quite understated and/or optimistically estimated in order to get the night time N60 maps they did.
These statistical models are just that though; statistics which have the usual problem of garbage-in-garbage-out. They are vulnerable to a number of tweaks in their assumptions including but not limited to estimated traffic, aircraft noise from future aircraft, types of future development, estimated climb rates of aircraft, etc. Lots of variables they can individually tweak to get them closer to the result they want.
Some interesting points that jumped at me:
- The first has to do not just with absolute noise but the frequency of it; I wouldn't be buying a house in the lower Blue Mountains right now for example. Having just enough noise to wake me up at 3am doesn't sound very appealing especially with all the approaching noise paths converging over this area between Penrith and Springwood. It's feels like the Government wanted to punish this area maybe?
- The flight paths seem very "all over the place" mainly due to the airspace that needs to be reserved for three airports that surround Badgerys including Camden, Richmond and Bankstown airports. This leads to some very interesting flight path layouts including paths from St Marys to Penrith CBD and onwards.
- The noise maps don't seem to follow the flight paths all too much; this might have just been a first glance mistake by me. What I do know is that with N60 maps stretching at least 20km from the current Sydney airport these maps particularly with their curved flight paths (planes can't climb as quickly) seem very suss to me.
I hope that I will soon have more time to analyse these documents and do some analysis. From first impressions however I will be honest; it doesn't totally add up especially when compared to data from other airports. My fear is that this document could be more of a political exercise to sell the proposal rather than a true honest assessment of how this development (which will eventually rival the size of JFK airport) will affect local residents.
Thank you to the writer of the Western Sydney Airport Blog.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your preliminary analysis of aircraft noise as it relates to the proposed Western Sydney Airport.
It is true what you say, that when analysing the impact of aircraft noise, it is both the volume of noise, and the frequency with which this noise occurs, that needs to be fully considered.
Many people living in Western Sydney and the Blue Mountains may not realise that the proposed airport is intended to operate 24 hours a day, and seven days a week. This means there will be no curfew.
In statements via the mass media, the federal government has given the public a false impression that it is only a relatively small number of people living very close to Badgerys Creek, who will be adversely affected.
The flight paths outlined in the current draft EIS and draft airport plan reveal that highly populated areas in Western Sydney and the Blue Mountains will be adversely affected.