Keeping the Council and the Airport honest, or will Tangaroa have the last word anyway?

Over the last couple of months two important developments occurred regarding the proposed Wellington Airport Runway Extension: Its $90m co-funding by Council found its way into the LTP – despite significant opposition against it, but with some very important caveats Nature has shown us on several occasions just how insane the proposal is to put such vulnerable infrastructure into the Cook Strait. In addition, WIAL met with the directly affected residents of Moa Point to update them about the work they’re doing in relation to the airport extension. We will discuss these two points in separate blogs, so let’s have a look at how the Long-Term Plan consultation went first… Despite being touted as a great success by its proponents, with apparently only a ‘noisy minority’ of people opposing the $90m for the runway extension that was ring-fenced in the LTP, this really doesn’t stack up on closer scrutiny. Strathmore Park blog has written about this extensively, eg here, here and here, but it was clear during consultation that both the Council and WIAL got quite rattled once submitters started asking some difficult questions. The WIAL CEO went as far as swearing – twice! – during his oral submission when Read More …

The Airport Extension, how much is it really going to cost?

How can we sign off to pay for half if we don’t know how much it will really cost? Open Blog by Guardians of the Bays In light of the looming Long Term Plan submissions due today Friday, April 17, our citizens group the Guardians of the Bays have kept delving deeper into the various questions we would have liked answered before the Council decides to sign us up to huge generational debt, rate hikes and asset sales. A large chunk of these hikes (33%, or $90m of the WCC share in the proposed LTP increase, with another $60m coming from other regional councils) seems to benefit a private company (Infratil who owns the 66% of the airport shares not owned by the Council), who admits the extension is ‘not economic’ and thus not worth putting their 2/3 share of the money into. In fact, a recent article suggests that the commercial value of the extension is worth only $50m over the next 40 years and that the airport would need $50m a year in taxes alone from the airlines to pay for it! With the Mayors in the whole Wellington Region now coming out (without going through proper Council Read More …

Introducing the Guardians of the Bays

We are the Guardians of the Bays, a group of concerned Wellington residents. We formed this group in 2013 to counteract the seemingly gung-ho approach of the Wellington City Council (WCC) and the Wellington International Airport Limited (WIAL) regarding the long-touted extension of the airport runway – either to the North into Evens Bay, or, more likely again to the South into Moa Point/Lyall Bay. We are concerned that very important questions about the economic viability of the proposed extension have not been answered. Even though some of us are already detrimentally and disproportionally affected by the airport and its actions, we are not anti-airport or anti-progress, instead, we are concerned that very important questions about the economic viability of this project do not seem to be asked or answered by the proponents of the extension – foremost the Mayor, the WCC, and the Chamber of Commerce. In a series of blog posts we will attempt to take a closer look at these questions and demand answers from WCC and WIAL before they move forward relentlessly with this multi-million dollar project. In short, the most concerning questions are: What is the actual cost going to be? $300m has been touted Read More …