Whangārei Mayor Sheryl Mai talks airport locations with Ruatangata West builder Darren Mason whose property is in the flight path of the Ruatangata West airport site.
Whangārei Mayor Sheryl Mai talks airport locations with Ruatangata West builder Darren Mason whose property is in the flight path of the Ruatangata West airport site.
Any Government airport spending into Northland would best go into an international airport in Kerikeri, a Ruatangata West resident says.
Lifestyle block farmer Tony Chaplin said the Government would be better spending money on turning Kerikeri's Bay of Islands domestic airport into an international facility, rather than shifting Whangārei's domestic airport from Onerahi.
Chaplin's comments came at a Whangārei District Council "have your say" new airport location meeting on Thursday night. It was held in Ruatangata hall, in the flight path of the potential new Ruatangata West airport site and less than five minutes' drive from the Ruatangata site.
WDC is looking at these and One Tree Point West as new Whangārei domestic airport locations.
Chaplin said he expected the Government, not Whangārei ratepayers, to be paying for any new airport.
WDC is looking into departing the district's existing Onerahi airport on the grounds that it has potentially come to the end of its life. However, staying put is also an option up for consideration. A five-week public consultation finishes on May 25. There have been 230 submissions so far.
Ruatangata West lifestyle block farmer Tony Chapman (centre) with Ruatangata farmer Brian Attwood (right) and WDC councillor Greg Martin at Thursday night's meeting.
Chaplin, who lives in the potential Ruatangata West flight path, said a new domestic airport for the North was not required. Government money should instead be put into a new international airport, at Kerikeri. Whangārei's airport should not be shifted from Onerahi, he added.
Chaplin said his comments were not about trying to divert a potential new airport from ending up in his world. He previously lived in Onerahi's Friendship Place near the airport and said it did not worry him.
"We bought, knowing the airport was already there," he said.
About 200 people turned out to the meeting.
Whangārei Mayor Sheryl Mai and Deputy Mayor Greg Innes were among half WDC's 14 councillors present.
Mai said there had been a range of opinions presented at the meeting, including many from those worried about a new airport arriving locally. She said the council's consideration of a potential new airport site did not mean a shift from Onerahi was a foregone conclusion.
She said that if however it happened, a new airport would be at least 20 years away.
Ruatangata airport opponents' action group spokesman Mike Franks said Ruatangata was not the best option. It would radically change the quiet rural farming area which included 100 lifestyle blocks that would be affected by noise, he said.
Ruatangata West agricultural contractor Jeremy Crawford's family property is on Hodge Rd in the middle of the Ruatangata West airport site.
Franks, an Attwood Rd lifestyle block owner, said it was not necessary for Whangārei's airport to shift from Onerahi. New flight technologies would come, helping to deal with WDC's concerns about the runway being too short.
Nearby Roydon Drive lifestyle block resident and Tauraroa Area School Year 7 pupil Aiden Sime, 11, was not in favour of the airport shifting to Ruatangata.
Ruatangata West agricultural contractor Jeremy Crawford lives on Hodge Rd in the middle of what would become the site's new runway. He said the airport should stay where it was. Technology would eventually catch up and Onerahi's short runway would not be an issue.
Ruatangata was his preference among the three new sites, if a decision was made to leave Onerahi.
"It's closer to town. It's got better topography with flat land," Crawford said.
Hodge Rd neighbour Sherry Read's property is in the new Ruatangata West airport footprint.
Aiden Sime, 11, lives alongside the south-western end of the Ruatangata airport site. He is against the airport shifting to Ruatangata because of noise and scaring away birds.
She and her husband had just started the process of selling their property before hearing about the plan in the media.
Outside the meeting hall, as kaka silhouetted by a crescent moon flew and screeched, Ruatangata West teacher Jo Nicholson said: "See those kaka, that's why we don't want a new airport here."
The kaka started arriving about five years ago. They came for about six months of the year as food on offshore islands such as Little Barrier and Great Barrier became scarce.
They would also arrive when drought hit the islands.
