This charter for the reduction of environmental nuisances does not provide for anything very precise for the moment apart from a six-month meeting schedule so everyone can talk to each other. And it’s already good because local residents have been asking for it for almost ten years. So Olivier Fratangeli, one of the leaders of the local residents’ collective, sees this as an encouraging first step: “We are still going to have a lot of work to really submit the nuisances to them, so that they understand. We too, moreover, need to be able to understand their constraints technically, so that we try to agree and respect each other. .”
Around the table in these meetings, there will therefore be the airport, the local residents but also the users, that is to say the managers of almost all the private companies using the runway as well as the soldiers of GAMSTAT (Groupement Air Mobility of the Army Technical Section).
Today on the airport there are about 30 thousand “movements” per year all-inclusive, take-offs and landings of planes and helicopters. With a turnover of one million euros, the airport is slightly in deficit even if the activity is increasing by 27% between 2019 and 2021. The department and the agglomeration subsidize up to 200,000 euros per year . The President of the mixed syndicate which manages the airport, the departmental councilor Laurent Monnet, is therefore in an almost impossible situation.
Developing the airport while reducing nuisance
It must develop the activity so that the deficit is reduced and that the communities pay less, but also reduce the nuisances for the residents and the environment. He sees an interesting challenge there: “Not all activities generate the same level of nuisance. We are very vigilant about the nature of the activities we develop. _We don’t want regular companies or even worse, low cost ones, that’s absolutely excluded_. In our development plan, there will not be this type of company which generates enormous nuisances with very large carriers.
– Nathalie de Keyzer
GAMSTAT efforts
But one of the essential activities on the track is that of the GAMSTAT soldiers. And Colonel Carrière who directs it details: “our main mission is to experiment with all the new aeronautical equipment of the Army, we evaluate helicopters, radio sets, radars, etc. We therefore need to fly in the mountains, near towns to measure the light pollution generated by city lights on our night vision binoculars or in areas that look like the desert.” Hence the regular flights over the Chambarans du Vercors, Sud-Ardèche, or in the evening, which cannot be carried out elsewhere or at another time. But GAMSTAT is aware of the nuisances it generates and tries to reduce them.. There is already half as many moves than a few years ago, 2,500 instead of 5,000 thanks to the flight simulators used to test certain equipment. The military also provide concentrate their flights on working hours, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays and limit night flights. “Historically, we made night flights every evening and now we limit ourselves to making night flights only twice a week and as close as possible to aeronautical night which corresponds to half an hour after sunset. never fly from 2 a.m. to 3 a.m., but really closer to the hour, to sunset” says Colonel Carrière.
Don’t fly right over the houses
But local residents don’t have that impression. Jean-Yves Barbier, member of the collective: “There are about 25,000 helicopter movements, a landing, a takeoff, okay, but then they rotate for exercises. We also have night rotations in the summer until 11 p.m. passages at low speed above the village of Malissard in particular. And from there, it becomes untenable. That is to say that _in the summer you have to close the windows to be able to escape the noise_.” Olivier Fratangéli believes that better studied air corridors could reduce nuisance “they don’t have to pass right over the houses or fly over the Malissard school”.
The six months of meetings provided for by the charter to listen to the grievances of some and the economic or military, technical and security constraints of others, will therefore not be too much to try to reach a compromise. But Patrick Lefranc, also a member of the collective of local residents against nuisances promises:“we want something concrete in six months, otherwise we will denounce this charter.”