Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
payment for houses within 100m of the track, compared with UK£30,000 for houses
within 300m of the line of the M25 motorway (
Times of London
, 1997, p15). In the
case of Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW), residents are offered a choice between buyout, the
purchase of easements or the assurance of guaranteed sales, and US$125 million has
been allocated to mitigate the effects on the city of Irving, relative to a likely project
budget of US$3.5 billion.
The most satisfactory outcome must be when a win-win result can be obtained.
This becomes more likely when a 'green-gold' coalition can be formed. A perhaps
fortuitous example was the development of the high bypass turbofan engine that
simultaneously cut noise and increased fuel efficiency. If the trade-offs can be cor-
rectly estimated, there must be scope for other technical and managerial win-win
solutions to achieving sustainable growth in aviation, even though the result to each
stakeholder may not be as advantageous as such stakeholders would have been antic-
ipating in the absence of the need for cooperation. The air transport industry must
still be educated in the need for sustainability (Everitt, 2001). A step in the right
direction is the setting of targets by the Advisory Council for Aeronautics Research
in Europe in order to halve fuel burn and perceived noise by 2020 (
Flight
, 2001,
p6). However, it is likely to cost UK£100,000 to take an additional person out of
noise contours, and it may be better to spend the money in the community than on
technology (Ellis, 2001). The present capacity caps that are imposed upon move-
ments at airports in response to their individual sensitivity to ecology, air pollution,
water pollution, noise and social issues are somewhat crude attempts to preserve a
balance based more upon 'do not lose too much' rather than the more palatable solu-
tions that might be available from a system-wide assessment of the need for change.
C
ONCLUSION
Estimating the social and economic benefits of aviation is fraught with difficulty. Nev-
ertheless, those benefits are as real as the costs, and some balance between the two is
required. The essence is to seek consensus rather than compromise and commitment
rather than agreement. This may be an unpalatable conclusion for the stakeholders
in a system attempting to adjust to a new environment of untrammelled competition,
coupled with freedom from government intervention. Equally, it does not help for
Green representatives in the European Parliament to require that within 18 months
the noise around airports be reduced to levels found in public libraries (
ACI Com-
muniqué
, 2001). Yet, this search for new values through cooperation may be the only
way to achieve a win-win solution, without which progress would not be made. The
emphasis has to be on joint progress and mediation rather than conflict and con-
frontation.
R
EFERENCES
ACI (1998)
Creating Employment and Prosperity in Europe
, Airports Council International
(Europe), Brussels, September
ACI Communiqué
(1996) Brussels, November, p23
ACI Communiqué
(2001) Brussels, February/March, p9
