The Prague Airport obtains a consenting EIA opinion on a parallel runway provided that it complies with71 conditions
Press release: 27.10.2011
The Ministry of the Environment has issued a consenting EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) opinion on construction of a new runway for aircraft take-off and landing at the Prague-Ruzyně Airport (“parallel runway”). However, the consenting opinion is conditional on fulfilling 71 measures which include, for instance, full closure of the operation of the airport at night. The Ministry of the Environment asessed the plan to construct a new parallel runway for aircraft take-off and landing with a length of 3,550 metres and a related investment plan at the Prague-Ruzyně International Airport. “Each stage of the process of environmental and public health impact assessment has been very carefully evaluated. “Due care has been given to all comments and background documentation,” says Jaroslava Honová, the Director of the Environmental Impact Assessment Unit of the Ministry of the Environment. She added that, since 2005, when the EIA process started, the Ministry has obtained more than 3,600 viewpoints, comments and suggestions from amongst the relevant municipalities, authorities, the public and civic associations. Based on the presented background documents, the Ministry laid down 71 conditions in its EIA opinion, which must be met in order to consider the plan acceptable.
The conditions include for instance:
• The key condition consists in full closure of the airport operations at the entire airport at the time from 12 midnight to 5.29 A.M. Thanks to this measure, requirements of the highly build-up area in the relevant places will be met
• The assessment requires use of the system for monitoring the noise burden (compliance with the conditions of the noise protection zone, compliance with standard take-off and landing routes, etc.) in order to inform the public, as well as independent checks of the correctness of this monitoring.
• it will be obligatory to carry out regular measurement of the pollution levels in the surroundings of the airport and continuation of the monitoring of fruits and crops in the surrounding of the airport is also required. The issued EIA opinion is one of the necessary expert background documents for administrative authorities who are authorised to issue the relevant permits (e.g. land-use decision, construction permit and others). This is not a decision on implementation or non-implementation of the plan. The permitting authorities (e.g. the relevant construction office in connection with the land-use decision, the Aviation Authority in connection with the construction permit and others) are obliged to take the EIA opinion into account in their decision.
The EIA opinion issued by the Ministry of the Environment is a success for the relevant surrounding municipalities whose condition of closure of the entire airport at night, rather than just the closure of the new runway (once the new runway comes into operation), was accepted. This kind of measure is standard practice in other countries. In other European and international airports around the world closure of night operation is a normal practice.