Detailed plans for future flight paths over the Blue Mountains have sparked fresh fears that the region's hard-won world heritage listing will be under threat from a new airport at Badgerys Creek.
Under indicative plans for flight paths during the airport's first years of operation, aircraft due to land at Badgerys Creek will pass over a point located to its north-west before making final approaches to the runway.
And it is the skies above the town of Blaxland that have been earmarked as the "merge point" for aircraft once the airport is opened in 2025.
Raising the ire of locals, several merge points further up the Blue Mountains – closer to Woodford and Wentworth Falls – will occur in the skies as the so-called Western Sydney Airport becomes busier when a second runway is eventually built in the following years.
Indicative short-term flight paths for the new airport.
Adding his weight to growing opposition, former NSW environment minister Bob Debus said a federal government report into the environmental impact of the planned airport paid "cursory attention" to the world-heritage value of the country's most visited national park.
"I am not saying we shouldn't build the airport – I am saying we shouldn't screw up the world heritage area," said Mr Debus, who was also a minister in the Rudd government and a long-time Blue Mountains MP.
In the US, flying over the Grand Canyon has been curbed in recent years.
Blue Mountains mayor Mark Greenhill said the draft report's assessment of the impact of the airport had been "grossly inadequate and bordering on non-existent".
"The council opposes flight path activity being concentrated over the Blue Mountains," he said.
Mr Greenhill said the number of flights would soar once a second runway was eventually built at the airport near the foothills of the Blue Mountains.
"Aeroplanes will be flying over our homes and our world heritage national park 24 hours a day, seven days a week," he said. "No alternative flight paths have been considered in detail."
The Blue Mountains City Council will seek guarantees from the Turnbull government that an "unacceptable concentration of aircraft and merge point" above the lower Blue Mountains be ruled out.
Mr Greenhill said the United Nations' world heritage body, UNESCO, had previously indicated an airport at Badgerys Creek might "compromise the integrity of the area", and a failure in the draft report to acknowledge such concerns "could pose a real threat to our world heritage status if not taken seriously".
Indicative long-term flight paths for the new airport.
Last month western Sydney councils slammed the report into the airport as "a rush job" and "full of holes".
Mr Truss has said the flight paths are "not set in stone" and will need refinement to "strike the right balance between safe and efficient airspace design, while reducing any environmental impacts".
The indicative flight paths to cater for both single and parallel runways were prepared based on preliminary analysis by Airservices Australia, which oversees the country's civilian airspace.
They show planes will be flying above 5000 feet when they are over the Penrith CBD, which is about 13 kilometres from the 1780-hectare site at Badgerys Creek that has been set aside for the airport.
Submissions on the government's draft environmental report close on December 18.
This story originally appeared on www.smh.com.au
