Hume council has consistently failed to protect Melbourne Airport’s buffer zone, an eminent Melbourne planning expert has claimed.
Professor Michael Buxton, who heads RMIT University’s peri-urban research unit, said Melbourne Airport was at risk of losing its curfew-free status if the council continued to rezone farming land for urban development.
A talk that Professor Buxton prepared for the Australian Mayoral Aviation Council’s annual conference spoke of Australia Pacific Airports’ concerns that development proposals would affect future operations and the curfew-free status of the airport.
To highlight the issue, he mentioned some planning scheme amendments Hume council had recently approved. One was land in Westmeadows, which was rezoned for infill housing, and another 236-hectare block near Mickleham and Somerton roads at Greenvale, where approval was given for 2800 houses for 8000 residents, despite national aviation and state planning policy.
“There’s been a systematic failure to maintain the original vision for the airport,” Professor Buxton said. “Since the 1970s, it’s been eroded so that, on the east and in the south, residential development has gradually encroached on the flight path. It’s been incremental, ad hoc rezoning of rural land,” he said. “The short-term interests of developers have been allowed to undermine the interests of the city.”
He said the airport’s planned third runway would significantly increase noise impacts to the east of the airport, namely at Westmeadows, Gladstone Park, Broadmeadows and Jacana.
Professor Buxton said the state government would have to retrofit thousands of houses with double-glazing and insulation to ensure residents could bear the aircraft noise, and to avoid calls for a night curfew.
He said co-ordinated action across the three tiers of government was needed to stop development in the airport’s buffer zone and address significantly greater noise levels caused by air traffic using the third runway. “It’s not too late, but there’s a threshold here and we’re just about to cross it.”
Hume council’s strategic planning manager, Michael Sharp, said a special planning overlay regulated developments affected by aircraft noise or those that could be affected in the future. He did not say how many development applications within the noise contours had been granted.
Melbourne Airport spokeswoman Anna Gillet said the airport’s curfew-free status was an extremely valuable asset to the state.
“The curfew-free status currently provides for the movement of an additional two million passengers a year, and injects $590 million into Victoria’s economy. By 2033, this is estimated to increase to … $1.3 billion,” she said.
