Who are we?

Guardians of the Bays is a broad-based residents’ group opposed to the proposal to extend the runway at Wellington International Airport (WIAL), and also wider airport expansion.

An Environment Court case on this proposal was finally canned in 2018 after years of dragging the community through expensive and protracted court hearings. Since COVID-19, airports and airlines around the world are struggling and in need of billions of taxpayer and ratepayer handouts. WIAL has also put up its hand for millions of our dollars, yet it continues to threaten to expand into our communities – it bought up half of Moa Point, the Miramar golf club, Miramar South School land and surrounding homes, and is aggressively expanding in Lyall Bay. In addition, it continues to threaten this needless and dangerous (see Supreme Court win of the NZ Pilots Association over the insufficient Runway End Safety Area (RESA) runway extension. We will continue to fight WIAL on the extension and other expansion plans because:

• We do not believe that the extension will achieve the level of benefits needed to warrant the extensive investment required, especially not if it is largely asked to be paid by the public, who are also carrying all the risks (including that no wide-bodied planes may ever come), and especially seeing international air travel will likely not return to past heights thanks to COVID-19 and the Climate Emergency.
• We do not believe in corporate welfare for a multi-national billion-dollar company, who themselves say that the extension is not economic.
• We do believe that the social, cultural and environmental costs the extension and wider airport expansion into Miramar and Lyall Bay would impose on Wellington residents and the South Coast and its users are too high.

We have a lot of experts in our midst, this is not a NIMBY group but a group of concerned residents who include lawyers, economists, business owners, politicians, policymakers, landscape architects, recreational clubs, marine ecologists, health professionals, pilots, aviation experts, architects and more. We will continue to fight this all the way.

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Affiliated and other Blogs posting about the Runway Extension:

• Surfbreak Protection Society
• Wellington Scoop
• No Fly Zone 
• Keith Johnson
• Peninsula News
• Wellington City Council Watch
• Croaking Cassandra
• Kiwiblog
• Liberty Scott
• Transporting Wellington
• Save Shelly Bay
• Keep a Cool World
• Shelly Bay for All
• Miramar Peninsula