Groningen Airport Eelde has canceled a consultation with concerned local residents. The GAE management only wants to communicate about its future plans through the regional airport consultation. Local Interest Glimmen is very disappointed.
“We are being blocked,” responds Henk Niemeijer of Local Interest Glimmen. His association would sit around the table for a second time on Tuesday evening with the airport management about the expansion plans in Eelde. However, that appointment was canceled a week in advance.
Tumultuous meeting will not be continued
The consultation was intended as a follow-up to an emotional meeting in October. There, residents of Glimmen, but also of other villages along the flight routes to the airport, voiced their concerns about the growth plans that should guide Eelde out of losses in the coming years. Due to the tumultuous course, the GAE leadership agreed to come to Glimmen a second time.
However, the airport changed its mind after preliminary consultation with Local Interest, says Niemeijer. “GAE considers an information meeting such as the one we convened as ‘not constructive’. For further consultation, they refer us to the Eelde Regional Airport Consultation Committee (CRO). We could have a say in that.”
That is a major disappointment for Glimmen, says Niemeijer. “The CRO is dominated by parties with an interest in the airport. Local residents are only represented by two of the eleven members. And we are also happy to have a few minutes of consultation time every now and then. That is not a serious consultation.”
Local residents have plenty of other opportunities to participate
GAE spokeswoman Francien Everts confirms the cancellation in Glimmen. Airport management prefers other ways to communicate with the environment. Moreover, the adoption of the new Airport Decree will offer local residents “quite a few opportunities for consultation in the coming year”, according to the spokeswoman.
“An emotional meeting, such as in October, is not the best format to get the right information in the spotlight to local residents,” Everts explains. “Also because they have different questions, which differ from village to village.” The demo flight that Eelde recently gave with the new, quieter training aircraft of the KLM Flight Academy offers more space for this. Weather permitting, a second flight will follow on Saturday.
However, this is not a satisfactory alternative for the people of Glimmen. The information meetings were organized precisely because local residents did not feel heard by the airport management. And that feeling exists in more villages close to the airport, says Niemeijer. Tuesday’s meeting went ahead without GAE representatives and attracted residents from miles around.
Concerns about growth plans extend to Norg and Noordlaren
Local residents as far south as Norg and Noordlaren are very concerned. The main sticking points are the fourfold increase in the number of training flights, to 12,000 per quarter, and the proposed extension of opening hours towards the night. GAE is working on a so-called Airport Decision that will make it possible to fly from 6:00 am to midnight from the end of 2024, half an hour earlier than now and an hour later. That would amount to three to four night flights per week.
According to Niemeijer, there is little response to the nuisance that local residents experience. “Complaints about noise pollution, among other things, are not taken seriously or swept under the table. The reporting desk is difficult to find and is unnecessarily cumbersome and complicated. Complaints are downplayed because they mostly come from one and the same person. We are dismissed as a bunch of whiners.”
Local residents ask for political attention in the States and the Tynaarlo council
In the coming weeks, local residents will ask political attention for their position in the debate in the Drenthe and Groningen States and the Tynaarlo municipal council about an additional subsidy totaling almost 50 million. This money must cover the costs of, among other things, the fire brigade and security over the next ten years. With this ‘dowry’, the regional authorities want to entice the Schiphol Group to actively participate in GAE as a shareholder.
Local residents are not against this additional capital injection, Niemeijer emphasizes. “We have no problem with the airport itself, but we do have a problem with the nuisance we experience. We are not against the existence of ‘Eelde’, but want to counterbalance the rosy picture that GAE gives of the support in the area. There is now a study in politics that should show that more than 90 percent of local residents support the expansion plans. Our own survey underlines the opposite: more than 94 percent of 500 respondents are against this.”