[getsmart-l] Fw: News Release - Land Over Landings Members Will Attend the GTAA Annual General Meeting

[Bonnie Littley]

News Release

May 6, 2007

For Immediate Release:

Land Over Landings Members Will Attend the Greater Toronto Airports Authority Annual General Meeting
Representatives for the group Land Over Landings and other environmental groups will attend the Greater Toronto Airports Authority ("GTAA") annual general meeting being held on Wednesday May 9, 2007 at the Westin Bristol Place Hotel, 950 Dixon Road, Toronto. 

The groups will be voicing their concerns with the proposal for an airport in Pickering.  All groups believe that an airport, the most toxic and inefficient mode of transportation, is not the best way to use the over $3 billion required to build it.  The GTAA's proposal wishes to build a "reliever" airport on some of the best farmland in Canada.  The site is bordered on the north and west by legislatively protected environmentally sensitive lands.  The groups propose that the lands be preserved and the money be invested in developing greener modes of transportation, such as a rapid rail line to carry passengers and goods between Windsor & Quebec.

The federal government expropriated over 18,000 acres of prime farmland over 35 years ago to build a second airport to serve the Toronto area.  The case presented at the time used inflated usage projections to justify the expenditure of millions of taxpayers dollars.  The current business case continues to use projections based on faulty data.

Recent data downloaded from the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the busiest airport in the word, reveals that a sophisticated and extremely efficient operation exists there currently.  The Atlanta airport site is only 4,700 acres but it handled a total passenger load of 84,846,639 international, domestic and in transit passengers in 2006.  It also handled 738,180 metric tons of international and domestic freight/express/mail shipments. There were 915,691 landings and takeoffs handling both types of air traffic. The government web site www.tc.gc.ca reveals that Toronto Pearson had a total passenger load of only 26,830,507 for the last reported year of 2004.  . 

Land Over Landings will request that as an alternative to an environmentally toxic airport on grade A farmland, surrounded by legislatively protected greenspace, the GTAA executive travel to Atlanta to learn what makes the Atlanta airport so efficient and capable of handling such large volumes of traffic which Toronto will not see for many decades, if at all.  They will also suggest that the GTAA negotiate with existing international airports in Hamilton and Waterloo to form some kind of partnership with them.  This would allow these facilities which are already up and running but at minimum capacities, to share their revenue with the GTAA in exchange for increased air traffic.  An existing airport in Oshawa is also capable of handling all of the cargo diverted there.  They have the infrastructure and transportation networks in place to currently handle this traffic.  The expansion of the 407 over north Oshawa will also provide additional access.

The groups will be on the sidewalk with signs at 12 noon.  The annual general meeting starts at 1:30 PM 

Please visit www.landoverlandings.com; www.vocalvoice.ca; www.nopickeringairport.ca; www.vocalvoice.ca/blackhole/Pickering_Airport.htm for further information on the proposed airport. 

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