2004-02-18 NOTE: This document is now out of date. For the latest news, see http://www.ladacan.org/ A I R P O R T E X P A N S I O N You are being given two choices for Luton - vast airport expansion or vast airport expansion. Actually, there is a third choice. The parallel taxiway being built now could allow the current 6.7m passengers to rise to 15m. This increase alone is unsustainable, and would have an unacceptable impact on Luton and those under the flight path. But the new consultation does not even give this as an option. It puts forward two new proposals - both could allow an increase to over 30m passengers! 1) to build a parallel runway to the south and extend it by 1 kilometre; 2) to realign it NE-SW, also extended by 1 kilometre. Both would swallow 100 hectares of good arable land which grow crops and support wildlife. Both would mean a new road behind the airport, turning beautiful places into concrete. (This is separate from the dualling of the road from the M1.) One plan would wipe out two Grade 2 listed buildings and ten properties. Tea Green would be uninhabitable and several farms would vanish. This is so Luton could have jumbo jets, which are more dangerous and intrusive, not built in Britain, and need more fuel to get into the air. Our countryside, health and roads can't take such increases. Creating this demand is WRONG. We have to stop this NOW or it could be government policy by next year. PLEASE WRITE A LETTER! Get the Government document (full or summary) from 0845 100 5554 or www.airconsult.gov.uk. Details about Luton are in Chapter 10 of the full document. We suggest you don't use the questionnaire, full of leading questions. Make your own points, particularly about how you and people in your area would be affected. THE CONSULTATION ENDS ON 30 NOV. PLEASE DON'T PUT IT OFF - WRITE NOW TO - Future Development of Air Transport - South East, Dept of Transport, Room 1/28C, FREEPOST LON17806, London SW1P 4YS. IF YOU CAN'T BE BOTHERED WITH THE DOCUMENT, HERE ARE SOME THINGS YOU MIGHT LIKE TO SAY. IN YOUR OWN WORDS PLEASE - CHOOSE THE ISSUES THAT BOTHER YOU MOST - DON'T USE THEM ALL. 1) Challenge expansion, and say you don't want EITHER of the new proposals, which would greatly increase the chance of an accident - air traffic control says it can't cope now. The UK already has 180m passenger journeys - airport corporations have persuaded the government they need 500m by 2030. This is probably a wild exaggeration of 'need', based on the start in the 1990s of low-cost air travel. Yet this 500m is not even their worst case scenario - it's their central one! This would equal a new airport the size of Stansted every year! Govt says aviation policy must be sustainable - anything less so would be hard to imagine. 2) For every million new passengers, 3/4 of a million will come by car, filling Luton's overcrowded roads and bringing more danger. The expansion is far too big for any new roads to cope - our whole road system would be affected. Passengers and employees would gridlock Luton's roads, pollute our air and increase stress and health problems. Talk about problems you already have - say how this huge expansion would affect your environment and quality of life. 3) It would mean far more noise and ruined lives for those under the flight paths, and this would affect residents of Luton, nearby villages and Harpenden much more than at present. 4) You don't want to lose 100 hectares of beautiful countryside providing you with oxygen to breathe. Expansion would bring a tunnel under the airport to 40 hectares of rolling fields behind the airport called Century Park, which would also be covered in concrete. The airport is on a plateau - massive amounts of soil would be needed to fill in valleys for an extra kilometre of runway. 5) You don't like the govt pitting region against region - please DON'T SAY put it somewhere else. This will help the greedy aviation executives win. Say these plans and figures are ridiculous, and you urge the government to be realistic and not to create more demand. The government is saying "if no expansion is agreed in SE, we'll build a new airport bigger than Heathrow in the West Midlands" (obviously devastating for people living there.) 6) Planes are the fastest growing source of CO2 emissions, nitrogen oxide pollution, and water vapour from contrails, causing climate change, freak weather and damaging the ozone layer. Oil is ejected constantly from bearings into the sky during jet flights. The govt and WWF both warn that we are rapidly making the planet uninhabitable. More air travel is countering govt and EU initiatives, including capturing CFCs from old fridges. 7) 50% of people flew last year, most on one return flight. Airport expansion would hit most those who don't fly, many of whom can't afford it, or choose not to, and are subsidising the rest. All this investment in the south-east would bring more people to the south and increase the rich-poor and north-south divide. 8) Bad for the economy - a) holidaymakers spend their money abroad. b) jollies for business travellers. Who's on the ground working if they're drinking in the sky? It would save millions if they used video conferencing. c) Many of the extra jobs would bring in people not from Luton but from St Albans, where there is very low unemployment so they can't find work there. 9) Trains are often quicker for domestic flights - you don't have to be an hour early, or travel for an hour by coach from a remote airport. Trains are much less polluting and should be cheaper than plane trips. The govt has promised to invest in rail - now we need longer trains and platforms, and an east-west line for S Beds. 10) More cargo flights! These are often at night, disturbing sleep. It is a scandal that we import and export hundreds of thousands of tonnes of the same food items. We should eat far more of our own produce. 11) There would be more military use of the airport. BAE is already in Luton to develop electronic warfare. 12) Ask for tax on aviation fuel. Unlike other transport, aviation is massively subsidised by all of us. No fuel tax like cars, no VAT like trains, no tax on buying aircraft. Yet 1 tonne of fuel burnt by an aircraft produces DOUBLE the pollution and damage of 1 tonne burnt by cars. It is hugely inefficient and wasteful - Beds CC's renewable energy consultation states that "if all the energy consumed at Luton Airport was included in the statistics it would account for 22% of energy consumed in the county"! IF fuel was taxed, VAT charged, and cost of all environmental damage paid, the drive for airport expansion would fade away. Money could go to trains, better fuels, and to relieve flood prone countries devastated by climate change. If air travel prices increased by 10%, demand would reduce by the same. _______________________________________________________________________________________ THE GOVERNMENT IS NOT MAKING IT EASY FOR US TO OBJECT. THE EXHIBITION ABOUT LUTON AIRPORT EXPANSION PLANS IS FROM 8AM TO 8PM ON FRI 27 AND SAT 28 SEP IN THE GARDEN SUITE OF THE HARPENDEN HOTEL, 18 SOUTH DOWN ROAD, HARPENDEN. DID YOU KNOW ABOUT THIS? A new briefing FLYING INTO TROUBLE - THE THREAT OF AIRPORT GROWTH is available from 0207 248 2223. www.airportwatch.org.uk info@airportwatch.org.uk Could your company recycle more? See www.wastebook.org This leaflet is published by Luton Friends of the Earth 01582 724257 doh@mcmail.com