Unveiling of distant airport shrouded in mystery and ecological concerns(2)

A worker walks on June 25 past a building that is going to be part of the airport under construction in Shennongjia, Hubei Province. Photo: Liu Dong/GT

In May, the newly appointed Party leader of Shennongjia Zhou Senfeng said at a meeting that he believed the new airport would break transportation bottlenecks which had restricted the development of Shennongjia economy's for a long time.

As a national tourist zone, tourism became the pillar industry for the local economy. However according to official figures, visitors to Shennongjia just broke 4 million in 2012 while some other tourist zones like  Zhangjiajie in neighboring Hunan Province neared 36 million.

Transportation was thought to be the major obstacle to attracting more tourists. Until Shennongjia airport opens, tourists need to spend four hours' drive from the nearest airport to get there. Even though the high-speed railway reached nearby Yichang in 2011, people would still need to drive for six hours on a rough mountain road to Shennongjia, putting many off.

According to Che Yin, director of Shennongjia's tourism development office, with the new airport opened, tourists would only need to take a short flight to Shennongjia from Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei Province. Wuhan's links to Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou would add to the interest from tourists there.

In order to develop tourism, Shennongjia is trying constantly to improve its transportation. But development always remains a trade-off between environmental protection and economic interests. As Shennongjia former leader Qian Yuankun said, they are always "dancing on the tip of a knife."

Real ecological concerns

 Hubei Province Environmental Protection official website bears an announcement that says the airport project passed an environmental impact assessment conducted by a team from the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) in April 2009. Six experts unanimously passed the report after a field investigation.

The MEP confirmed to the Global Times on Wednesday that the airport had passed an environmental assessment report and the ministry had urged the airport constructors to open the report to the public as soon as possible.

When the Global Times visited the government offices of Shennongjia on June 25, a press officer named Peng Jianli also turned down requests to see the report and said there was no information available at the moment. Peng said an official news conference would be held prior to the airport opening in October but that no comments would be made until then.

"We always see environmental protection as the most important thing when we are developing tourism and the local economy. The decision to build an airport was made after expert consultation. Compared with building a highway or a railway, an airport can have a much lower impact," Peng added.

According to retired Professor Hu Hongxing from Wuhan University, a leading bird expert spent decades in Shennongjia, the Hubei Environmental Protection Bureau once invited him to write a report on birds that would be affected by the airport project in 2009. His report concluded that although the impact would be manageable, long-term observation was needed to measure the full result.

Meanwhile, Lei Bing, a senior engineer specializing in noise impact assessment from China Railway Siyuan Survey and Design Group, and one of the experts on the MEP's assessment team, told the Global Times that the airport wouldn't damage the local environment.

What happens now?

Shennongjia airport is not the first airport to be built at a high altitude or in a nature reserve. Jiuzhaigou airport in Sichuan Province provides a successful precedent. The 3,440-meter-high airport, which was open in 2003, is located on the edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau near Jiuzhaigou national nature reserve. It now receives 1.75 million passengers annually.

However, the need to balance economic development and environmental protection is always troubling. This conflict worries Li Yunyin, head of Hongju village, the closest village to the airport, and one of the most remote areas of Shennongjia that used to be linked to the outside world with nothing more than a dirt track.

"I certainly hope the local economy could be developed, but as a man who was born and grew up here, I don't want to see our lives damaged because of the airport," Li said. "The issue is what we can do to reduce the cost of the airport as much as possible."

With more city-dwellers purchasing properties in Shennongjia of late, Li has another cause for gloom. "As Shennongjia becomes more and more like a city, do you think people will still come here?"