Around 8,000 submissions have been received from community members across Sydney and the Blue Mountains, as well as from a mix of local councils, special interest groups and other stakeholders on the Australian Government's draft Environmental Impact Statement for the preliminary flight paths for Western Sydney International (Nancy-Bird Walton) Airport (WSI).
The consultation period has formally closed.
I want to thank communities across Western Sydney for their engagement throughout this important stage of the process.
The EIS included assessments of the noise, social and environmental impacts of the WSI preliminary flight paths and the Australian Government's proposed actions to mitigate these impacts.
This included a draft policy for noise treatments to existing properties most impacted by aircraft noise and considerations for any potential acquisition of property.
This feedback will be considered when finalising the flight path design.
The Australian Government appreciates that WSI's flight paths has caused some concern for community members, particularly around aircraft overflight noise.
That is why we released WSI's preliminary flight paths early, in June 2023, and undertook a range of community information and feedback sessions so that communities were across the detail of the flight paths and could contribute to the process by making a submission.
This included a letterbox drop in July and August 2023 to 922,345 addresses and a second, led by Airservices Australia, in late November and early December to 1.5 million addresses across 26 local government areas in Greater Sydney.
Since the release of the preliminary flight paths in June 2023, my department has held 46 drop-in sessions and information stalls across Western Sydney, the Blue Mountains and Greater Sydney, as well as two online webinars.
Airservices Australia has supplemented the engagement with an additional eight events.
A range of material was released with the preliminary flight paths and draft EIS to help undertake a comprehensive community engagement program.
These included an interactive aircraft overflight noise tool, a digital draft EIS, explanatory videos, brochures, fact sheets and online briefings all available via a dedicated website, www.wsiflightpaths.gov.au.
