A hearing panel has recommended approval of a plan to extend Nelson Airport’s runway to the north.
Nelson City Council will vote on the contentious matter on Thursday, however it has limited legal grounds to reject the panel’s recommendations.
An extended runway is sought to improve safety and to better cater for future growth and low-emission aircraft, which the airport has argued will be heavier and thus need a longer runway.
The airport has said the extension was not about catering to commercial jets to land which would require another consultation and planning process.
The runway is proposed to be extended north, towards Tāhunanui, rather than south, towards the estuary mouth of Jenkins Creek, due to the financial cost and ecological impacts.
A longer runway is not expected to be built for another 10-15 years.
The extension would have several impacts on the Tāhunanui suburb, including extra rules for development in some areas, a small increase in noise, and the re-configuration of a neighbouring golf course.
The airport’s proposal contained two key aspects: the Notice of Requirement and Private Plan Change 30.
The notice of requirement is the more controversial aspect of the proposal. It sought to alter three planning designations to allow for a northern runway extension to be built, operated, used, and maintained, and introduced additional amendments to air noise and height restrictions.
The plan change would introduce a new airport zone and provide a more consistent approach to managing activities sensitive to airport noise.
Together, the notice of requirement and plan change would grant the airport the necessary planning and zoning framework to extend its runway.
Nelson City Council delegated its responsibility for hearing the proposal to a panel of independent commissioners due to the council’s conflicting roles as a 50% shareholder of the airport and as the regulatory authority.
On Thursday, December 12, the panel supplied the council with its recommendations report which was then made public yesterday evening.
The panel found that the notice of requirement will result in positive effects, and that any adverse environmental effects will be sufficiently managed by the proposed conditions.
They also determined that the plan change would enable the safe and efficient operation, development, and growth of Nelson Airport in a way that manages adverse effects.
According to legislation, the council has the final say on the plan change, but the airport has the final say on the notice of requirement.
As such, the panel recommended that the council approves the plan change and recommends that the airport confirms the notice, both of which were amended after conferencing between airport and opposing experts.
In the agenda for the council’s Thursday, December 19 meeting, council officers noted that the council can legally only reject the recommendations if it has “a good reason for doing so”.
“Good reasons” were likely to be limited to a situation where the panel made an “obvious and material error”.
Council officers did not find any errors of that nature to justify rejecting the recommendations.
Rejecting the recommendations without good reason would open the council up to legal risk and could require the council itself to re-do the hearing and deliberation processes itself.
Initially, the plan had been vigorously fought by two principal opponents: the Nelson Golf Club and the Tāhuna Beach Holiday Park.
The golf club would lose half of its land because of the extension, while the holiday park would become subject to new development rules and more than 100 of its long-term residents face eviction due to a combination of the new rules and planning discrepancies.
In 2019, the council discovered a planning discrepancy which meant that a resource consent was actually required to allow long-term residents in the holiday park.
As the holiday park had previously been understood not to require a consent, the discovery resulted in the long-term residents becoming unlawful.
During the six-day hearing on the proposal, the airport successfully argued that the panel cannot consider the proposal’s impacts on the long-term residents due to that fact.
Further discussions between the airport and golf club saw the club agree to support the proposal on the basis that its 18-hole championship course can be reconfigured onto an adjacent peninsula administered by the airport.
The Tāhunanui Business and Citizens Association also opposed the application because of the development restrictions that will be imposed on parts of the suburb.
Depending on the location, new builds and renovated spaces in the suburb may need to gain a resource consent and must be acoustically insulated and ventilated. In higher-noise environments, new developments would be prohibited.
The association was concerned about the additional costs imposed by the rules being a disincentive to develop, dissuading further investment into Tāhunanui.
The new rules would apply once the notice of requirement is formally incorporated into the city’s planning rules, rather than when the runway is extended.
A total of 471 submissions were received on the airport’s proposal, the vast majority of which were opposed to the plan.
Should the recommendations be approved, they can still be appealed to the Environment Court.
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