A RATEPAYER lobby group says plans to widen the sealed section of the main runway at Tyabb airfield are “highly premature” as a precinct plan is yet to be adopted by Mornington Peninsula Shire.
“The Tyabb airfield precinct plan has not yet been finalised and certainly not approved,” Tyabb and District Ratepayers Business and Environmental Group president Stefan Berson stated in a letter to the shire CEO Carl Cowie.
Mr Berson asked Mr Cowie if widening the runway would be subject to “a full public planning process” in line with a decision by councillors in 2005.
Mr Berson’s letter followed comments by Peninsula Aero Club president Peter Bernardi that he hoped the sealed section of the runway would be widened from 10 metres to 18 metres by the end of the year (“Runway plan aids safety” The News 26/9/17).
Mr Bernardi said the widening would cost the club up to $500,000 and that it was not seeking permission for larger aircraft to use the airfield.
The public exhibition and time for comment on the airfield precinct plan ended 30 September, with the ratepayer group saying in a flyer “we believe it is unbalanced and it unfairly favours further development of the airfield with no safeguards for the amenity of the local community”.
A flyer distributed by the group stated that there was no protection in the plan “to existing and potentially increasing levels of noise and airborne lead pollution from the airfield’s operations”.
It says the plan proposes that there be no limits on the airfield’s operating hours; noise levels, number of flights or flight paths, and types of aircraft “such as warbirds, helicopters and gyrocopters”.
It said more than $1 million of ratepayers and taxpayers’ money had already been spent “on this private facility” and that the plan “gives tacit support” to widening and lengthening the main runway as well as “permitting more hangars on ‘underutilised’ land along Stuart Rd”.
In the lead up to the October 2016 council elections it was revealed that the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal had ordered the partner of a candidate to stop keeping aircraft in a shed on land abutting the airfield in Stuart Rd.
Peninsula Aero Club vice president Jack Vevers said he was concerned about the “amount of misinformation” being disseminated about airport precinct plan.
“The airport is an important strategic piece of infrastructure that provides jobs for 100 people, a first class learning facility for local high schools to teach students to fly and a fantastic platform for emergency services to operate out of.”
“[The plan] is not about expanding the airport into a large commercial operation or bringing in larger aircraft,” he said. “The operating permits already limit many things we can do and there is no proposal to change these conditions.”
Mr Vevers said issues causing “unwarranted anxiety in the community” included claims there would be no limits on the airport’s hours of operation.
He said the airfield’s permit restricted aircraft take-offs, night flights, weight and banned jets.
“All aircraft comply with the noise regulations and cannot be modified in any way without approval by CASA,” Mr Vevers said.
Mr Vevers said there were “no plans at this stage to lengthen the runway and, what’s more, we don’t own the land”.
Stephen Taylor and Keith Platt
First published in the Western Port News – 3 October 2017
