Last week Clear Skies for Modiin learned by accident that the new flight path over Modiin was already formally published, without the CAA or the Modiin Municipality informing the Modiin public. The flight path was initially published as going into effect on June 3rd, 2010. This publication was replaced by a second publication according to which the flight path will go into effect on July 1st, 2010. Given that new flight paths need to be published 45 days before they go into effect, this means that the new flight path was published no later than April 19th 2010 – well over a month ago, without informing the Modiin public.
Our only course of action at this point is to appeal to the supreme court of justice against CAA’s chosen flight path, stating that viable alternative flight paths that are less damaging to Modiin residents have been proposed, and that these alternate flight paths have been rejected out of hand by the CAA. Clear Skies has found a law office that specializes in aviation law, who are very well versed with the legal aspects of the flight paths. Their lead solicitor was the legal council to the Lapidot committee, which one of its recommendations was to setup an instrument landing approach to runway 30 (which resulted in the flight path over Modiin). The law office believes that we have a good chance of changing the CAA decision via a petition to Bagatz, but that we must act fast.
We conveyed the above information to mayor Bibas a week ago and we asked for an urgent meeting to promote the petition to Bagatz, but we were ignored - just like the hundreds of emails sent by Modiin residents earlier this month were ignored.
During the course of the past few weeks Clear Skies members have been under a great deal of pressure by elements in the Modiin Municipality to close shop, as the Modiin mayor announced that as far as he is concerned, the struggle for Clear Skies is over and that we need to accept the CAA decision. Sharon Maoz resigned from Clear Skies three weeks ago, stating in a newspaper interview that he had no choice but to side with the mayor, and last week four more activists followed suit.
Those of us who continue the struggle for Clear Skies remain committed only to the 5,000 residents who signed the Clear Skies petition, demanding:
“to wage a stubborn struggle for our quality of life and for our property, via any legal, judicial or public means against the proposed flight path, because we will not let Modiin-Maccabim-Reut become Israel’s neglected backyard!”
Thus we are taking the struggle to the city council arena, and we are calling on the general Modiin-Maccabim-Reut public to demand from Modiin city council on its meeting on Wednesday this week, June 2nd, 7PM, to decide on urgently submitting a petition to Bagatz by the Municipality against the CAA flight path.
It is imperative that a great deal of Modiin residents show up for this city council meeting, stare the city council members in the eye, and demand them to submit a petition to Bagatz. The cost of submitting such a petition is negligible (~one shekel per Modiin resident) and we have nothing to lose by submitting it, and a lot to gain.
Please note Wednesday June 2nd 7PM in your calendar and follow closely our announcements this week.
Your active support this week is crucial for the struggle to keep our Skies Clear of noisy and polluting jet planes.
See the announcement on our Hebrew Clear Skies website for more details.
