Noise from the new western Sydney airport won’t force the acquisition of nearby properties, but dozens will be eligible for free home insulation to dull sound.
About 90 properties will be eligible for free insulation to dull the noise of 480 weekly flights out of western Sydney airport under a preliminary plan.
The federal government on Tuesday released the draft environmental impact statement for Sydney’s second international airport, outlining how its planned flight trajectories will force planes using Sydney’s existing Kingsford Smith airport to tweak their paths over the city.
The draft also included mitigation measures for sound.
It says between 7,000 and 12,000 residents will experience five or more aircraft noises a day as loud as a washing machine once the airport reaches capacity.
That level of noise is enough to interrupt indoor conversations if windows are open.
Depending on the direction of travel, up to 84,500 people could be exposed to two events as loud as a conversation each night.
But the report estimates that only 91 homes and other premises fall in the zone eligible to receive free insulation to abate noise.
Insulation measures include installing thicker windows, sealing gaps, improving roof insulation and solidifying external doors.
No properties will have to be acquired for being inside a noisier zone adjacent to the airport, although nearby residents can apply for consideration.
While the number of those eligible appears low, the draft report says as few as five properties would have been eligible if the criteria used for Sydney airport was applied.
It also reflected lower residential density and planning over many years in anticipation of the airport’s construction.
Continuous descent approaches, which are GPS-guided approaches that allow aircraft to operate more efficiently and reduce noise, will also be available at western Sydney airport, but have not been implemented at the existing Sydney airport in Mascot.
The transport minister, Catherine King, said people could have their say on the draft report and their feedback would be considered when finalising the flight path design.
“Feedback has, and continues to be, a critical element to ensuring we deliver an airport which realises … lasting benefits, while balancing the needs of the community, environment, industry and users of the broader greater Sydney airspace,” she said.
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The single-runway facility will be the first airport in New South Wales to operate with no curfew, allowing flights to take off and land at all hours to cater for up to 10 million passengers a year at the time of its opening in 2026.
Meanwhile, Sydney’s Kingsford Smith airport said urgent reforms for noise mitigation were now required for its facility.
While its flight paths will have to be changed to accommodate the new western Sydney airport, a Sydney airport spokesperson said the noise and emissions regulations governing it “remain frozen in time”.
“We should consider further reforms that would allow our local residents to also benefit from the latest technology and make airspace across the entire Sydney basis much more efficient,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson also called for the implementation of the Harris Review as one key reform. The review examined the legislation that limits take off and landing slots at Sydney airport to reduce noise.
The Liberal MP Melissa McIntosh said her electorate of Lindsay was now the most impacted by western Sydney airport’s flight paths, “which does not seem to be fair”.
McIntosh accused King of releasing the flight path information to media on embargo “without adequate prior warning”.
“This is purely about playing politics with the people of Western Sydney and I for one won’t be quiet about it. Getting a good run in the media without scrutiny should not be the minister’s top priority,” she said.
McIntosh said the latest tranche of environmental impact documents “contain technical and complex information” and “will require time to go through” to understood the full impact.