“88 planes a day limit.” Central Coast Express Advocate, 21 June 1996.
Published one day after the previous report on the proposed airport restrictions, this article provides considerably more detail about the provisions being advanced through State Parliament.
Most notably, it records a proposed maximum of 88 aircraft movements per day, rather than the 80 movements reported in the previous day’s article, together with a 1200-metre runway limit and a 10pm to 6.30am curfew. The article also identifies a significant change in planning control: Planning Minister Craig Knowles would become the consent authority for any proposal to extend the runway beyond the legislated limit.
Paul Crittenden presented the legislation as a mechanism for independent scrutiny rather than an absolute prohibition on future expansion. An application for an 1800-metre runway could still be made, but would trigger State Government review. The proposed process included reconsideration of the Environmental Impact Statement and Fauna Impact Statement and an independent aircraft-noise assessment incorporating an Australian Noise Exposure Forecast (ANEF).
The article also captures the increasingly political nature of the Warnervale Airport dispute. Crittenden argued that Wyong Shire Council had effectively acted as both applicant and consent authority, describing it as being “judge and jury”. Council, by contrast, argued that the restrictions jeopardised two decades of planning, future employment and investor confidence.
Read alongside the reports immediately preceding it, the article marks the point at which the long-running dispute over the physical expansion of Warnervale Airport became subject to specific statutory restrictions imposed by the NSW Parliament.
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