MEDIA RELEASE

Regional airport not going to fly in Bay of Plenty
For immediate release: Tuesday 8 August 2006

A single regional airport is not going to fly in the Bay of Plenty.

Environment Bay of Plenty today (Tuesday 8 August) sent a clear message to territorial authorities that it had dropped investigations into a regional airport - for good.

At the strategic policy committee, councillors received a report which showed a regional airport would be too expensive and was not worth the benefits that would be gained from it.

The report was initiated after years of “uninformed discussion” over whether the region would be better off with a single airport rather than the current three airports. “We needed to know for sure and, for that, we needed the facts. We’ve done the research now and it has given us a definite answer,” says Environment Bay of Plenty chairman John Cronin.

At the meeting, councillors voted out a staff recommendation to re-visit the project in 10 years, instead agreeing simply to take no further action.

They also added a clause to inform other councils, airport authorities and the SmartGrowth working group of the decision so they could take it into account in future land transport planning.

“This is the end of the exercise,” Mr Cronin says. “The three airports in Tauranga, Rotorua and Whakatane can now plan for the future with the knowledge that there will not be a regional airport.”

The report is the second part of a study into whether the Bay of Plenty would benefit from a regional airport.

ENDS

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