The government’s new plans for Schiphol Airport are under fire after an official advisory body found the environmental impact report to be seriously flawed. The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Commission warns that it is unclear if local residents will actually be protected from noise and pollution. The commission has advised the cabinet to go back to the drawing board and rewrite the report before making any final decisions on flight numbers.
The current plan aims to cap flights at 478,000 per year, with the potential to rise to 500,000 if noise targets are met. However, the commission found that the research used to justify this was misleading, making the environmental damage look smaller than it really is. It also noted that previous promises to make planes quieter have not been kept, and that the government failed to look at simpler solutions, such as banning night flights or further reducing the total number of planes.
Health is a major concern, as the experts are not convinced the new rules will safeguard the wellbeing of people living nearby. They argue the current rules give the aviation industry too much “leeway,” which could allow noise problems to continue indefinitely. In response, the Ministry of Infrastructure stated that while they will look at the advice, the final decision on what counts as “enough protection” is a political choice for the cabinet to make.
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