01-12-2022
Politics
Editorial
VLAARDINGEN – Residents Against Aircraft Nuisance (BTV) calls on the city council of Vlaardingen to come up with a new answer to the result of the participation process around Rotterdam airport. The council’s draft for reflection is undermined by BTV.
And that’s putting it mildly. BTV says it is ‘very critical’ of the concept. Among other things, it accuses the council of putting the fate of the city’s inhabitants in the hands of the airport instead of safeguarding the interests of Vlaardingen’s population. BTV also attributes ignorance to the council. In this way, the council appears to have moved past the failure of the participatory process.
Another example of ignorance, if not deliberate deception, is the adjustments proposed by the council in its response. According to BTV, these are proposals that the aviation industry rejected during the participation process. “RTHA (Rotterdam Airport, ed.) will ignore these proposals. Of course you know that too.”
A ditto contribution ‘to the stage’ is the research proposed by the council into ‘the relationship between noise volume, peak load, the frequency of the number of flights and the number of flights per hour when it comes to perceived nuisance’. This would be necessary to “be able to assess and representatively calculate the inconveniences experienced”. “The residents who experience inconvenience on a daily basis are not interested in that connection. It is clear that all these aspects contribute to the genes. The extent to which people experience discomfort is not calculated, but measured. And there is a very simple method for this: you can ask them,” said BTV.
“We are surprised that you still believe that growth through the use of ‘quiet’ (your quotation marks) aircraft can lead to less inconvenience. The resident representatives of Rotterdam and the residents of Schiedam and Lansingerland, who were part of the participation process, have repeatedly insisted that the deployment of new aircraft with a quieter engine leads to more noise nuisance, because the proposed fleet renewal consists of larger aircraft ( so much more noise) and the number of flight movements increases. Why are you putting this aside? The residents of your municipality also experience this inconvenience. The airport management put it this way at a residents’ evening in Lansingerland: ‘You don’t get more inconveniences, but more often’,” said BTV in its written response to the concept.
Critical is certainly the term for the reaction of the representatives of the people who live near the airport. “You say that RTHA is important for the economic business climate of the Rotterdam/Hague region. However, this economic importance is very limited. Only five percent of the flights from RTHA are business trips. The majority are cheap holiday flights with no added value for the region. The economic value for The grounding is practically zero.”
For BTV, the status of the ‘End Product Participation Program LGB RTHA’ (EPP) is clear: “It is advice from the aviation industry to RTHA. It is therefore not surprising that this pamphlet is solely aimed at securing RTHA’s and Transavia/KLM’s ailing revenue models . We would like to point out that the EPP conflicts with the aviation policy document 2020-2050 on all important points.”
Equally condemning is BTV about the measures proposed during the final conclusions of the participation process. To the councillors: “You must also realize that the measures proposed in the EPP to reduce noise pollution at night and at the edge of the day are largely nonsense: the RTHA has no influence on the airlines’ tightly planned flight schedules, fleet renewal and phasing out of existing aircraft on the edge of the day.”
According to BTV, the only way to achieve the goal formulated in the aviation policy document, namely the reduction of noise pollution and the emission of substances harmful to people and the climate, is to: shrink. B&W van Rotterdam (directly interested party) states i.a. AD of 30-11-2022.” Councilor Vincent Karremans (VVD) states in an interview that things ‘need to change’. “I am aware that this will probably result in a decrease in the total number of aircraft movements,” he said to the airport’s management. “I am not blind to the economic consequences. But I consider it necessary to make the inconvenience for the local residents more bearable.” VAT administrators Alfred Blokhuizen and Servaas Sinnecker: “Rotterdam’s position is considerably stronger than in your draft reflection.”