MOVEMENT TO BLOCK AIRPORT EXPANSION

THE campaign to block the ambitious Palma airport expansion plan is gathering momentum. A number of resident associations from Son Ferriol, Sant Jordi, Can Pastilla and Coll d´en Rabassa have joined forces with the Farmers Union, the PSM Majorcan Socialist Party and Balearic environmental group GOB to pressure the Ministry for Development into scrapping the plan to transform Palma's Son San Joan into an airport fit to handle 38 million passengers per year by the year 2015. Last year the airport handled less than 20 million. GOB's spokesperson, Miquel Angel March, said yesterday that the anti-airport expansion movement will continue to gain support, claiming that the project will be a “catastrophe” for Majorca and called on the whole island to join the campaign to block the project. March also said that when the project was first unveiled some 18 months ago, both the Balearic government and the Insular Council of Majorca rejected the proposal, in particular the environmental impact study which was not carried out by Palma Council but Spanish airport authority AENA. The anti-airport expansion campaign, members of which have been fighting the airport authority for years over noise pollution, maintains that the project will not benefit Majorca in any way what so ever. GOB said that an airport fit for 38 million passengers per year will destroy Majorca, increase noise and air pollution, put massive strain on the island's already crumbling infrastructure and natural resources while encouraging further growth in the tourist industry.