SRK Consulting, appointed by Airports Company South Africa, has undertaken the Scoping and Environmental Impact Reporting for the realignment of the runway. The Draft Environmental Impact Report will be released to the public for an eight-week comment period fromon 31 March 2015 until 25 May 2015. Airports Company South Africa proposes to re-align the primary runway and construct parallel and rapid exit taxiways. The re-aligned primary runway will be 3 500 m in length and will be built to international specifications, allowing larger aircraft, such as the A380, to land at Cape Town International Airport, enabling airport expansion and increased airport capacity.

“The Scoping Phase, which sought to determine the boundaries of the impact assessment study, was completed in July 2014 and the Final Scoping Report was accepted by the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) on 30 September 2014. This Draft Environmental Impact Report comprehensively describes and assesses the impacts of the proposed re-aligned runway project on various aspects of the environment, through specialist studies,” said Deborah Francis, acting Communications Manager: Cape Town International Airport.

The Specialist studies undertaken investigate key potential direct, indirect and cumulative impacts on air quality, noise, terrestrial and aquatic ecology, groundwater, socio-economic impacts, and transport amongst others.

A public consultation period will run for eight weeks, from 31 March 2015 till 25 May 2015. The public is invited to submit comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Report. During this period there will also be a series of Open Days where the public are invited to attend and ask questions and make comments about the project.