2023-11-12 18:07:34
Nearly 600 people took part in a protest march in Zaventem on Sunday once morest the expansion of the national airport located on the territory of this Flemish municipality, a stone’s throw from Brussels.
They call for a ban on night flights, a maximum of 220,000 air movements per year and the imposition of a low-emission zone in the sky, so that only planes with low CO2 emissions and the quietest can land there. . They are calling for noise and overflight frequency limits for all local residents.
The march was organized by the Bond Beter Leef milieu with 22 associations representing residents of Flanders, the North and the South of Brussels, an unprecedented rally according to the organizers. They intend to weigh in and raise public awareness: the airport manager’s environmental permit must be renewed in July 2024, a public inquiry must start in a few weeks. The airport wishes to obtain, via a new permit, authorization to continue to develop, which is opposed by local residents who have been fighting once morest nuisance for years.
They openly threatened to go to court if this permit was granted. On Sunday, the resident associations represented and the environmental organizations gathered at Zaventem station, before crossing the village on foot and heading, calmly, towards the airport. Along the way, those present chanted slogans such as “no more flights, no way“, “the sky has a limit” or “night flights steal our nights“. Immediately at the airport, the demonstrators sang a reworked version of “silent Night” in French and Dutch. The representative of Bond Beter Leefmilieu – the Flemish counterpart of Inter Environnement -, Jasper Wouters, stressed that Brussels Airport’s desire to continue to grow would translate, in the event of a green light, into growth in freight and the number of passengers, but also nitrogen oxide emissions, and the number of trucks on the roads.
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