 A new campaign to fight the expansion of Birmingham International Airport (BIA) was launched today by a partnership of environmental activists and local residents.
Birmingham Friends of the Earth and Birmingham Airport anti-Noise Group (BANG) have teamed up to create a tongue-in-cheek website, www.flyagra.co.uk, satirising the proposal to extend the airport's runway. A spoof spam e-mail advertising 'Flyagra, the revolutionary treatment that really keeps you up!' will direct web users to the site, which compares the runway extension plans to a dodgy 'male organ' enlargement treatment.
But, say campaigners, the wesbite also has a serious message to convey: that airport expansion is bad news for local residents and the environment, and time is running out in which to stop the development going ahead.
In November BIA published its new development 'master plan' setting out the latest expansion proposals, including a £120 million 400-metre extension to the south-east end of the main runway and a third passenger terminal. If the airport company receives planning permission from Solihull Council to begin construction, the longer runway could be operating as early as 2012. Additional work to develop the airfield will allow BIA to handle 27.2 million passengers a year, three times as many as in 2006, by 2030.
Campaigners point to evidence that extending the runway and increasing runway capacity will result in a doubling of the number of local people exposed to significant aircraft noise pollution [1] and a trebling in aircraft carbon dioxide emissions from flights out of Birmingham. [2]
Birmingham Friends of the Earth campaigner Chris Williams said:
"Last November's Airport Master Plan confirmed what many suspected: BIA has no credible climate change policy. Instead, we had only a token gesture of support for aviation's eventual inclusion under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, and a handful promises to promote public transport and energy efficiency, none of which has any bearing on carbon dioxide emissions from aircraft. But we know that climate-changing emissions from BIA's operations are forecast to grow three-fold in the next twenty-five years if the airport expands as planned."
The Flyagra campaign will concentrate on lobbying Solihull Council to refuse planning permission for the airport's expansion.
Mr Williams added:
"As planning authority for BIA, Solihull Council will be under tremendous pressure from the business community and the other West Midlands local authorities to grant planning permission for the runway extension. But it would be highly irresponsible of planners to give the green light to a development that could send carbon dioxide emissions literally sky-high."
New lower forecasts of future growth in demand for flights at BIA mean that the controversial second runway is unlikely to needed before 2030. But BANG and Birmingham FoE warn that opponents of the Second Runway who are backing the runway extension as the 'lesser of two evils' should think again.
Secretary of BANG James Botham said:
"Extending Birmingham International Airport's current runway and increasing airport capacity will make the Second Runway more, not less, likely to go ahead in future. Local politicians hoping to position themselves as both 'pro-environment' and 'pro-airport' by on the one hand opposing a second runway while on the other hand backing the runway extension are unwittingly paving the way for the very thing they say they are against. The runway extension is merely 'phase one' of a long-term programme of development culminating in a second runway, albeit later now rather than sooner."