LONDON — Parliament approved plans to make Europe’s biggest airport even bigger, backing on Monday what the government described as the most important transportation decision in a generation.
The House of Commons voted overwhelmingly, 415-119, to build a third runway at Heathrow Airport after hours of debate on the 14 billion-pound ($18.6 billion) project. The decision follows decades of study and argument over how to expand airport capacity in southeastern England, and it is certain to be challenged in the courts.
Prime Minister Theresa May believes the project will boost economic growth while signaling the country’s commitment to expand international trade and transport links as it prepares to leave the European Union.
Neighbors and environmentalists object because of concerns about pollution, noise and the communities — some dating back hundreds of years — that will be destroyed.
Business groups strongly backed the government. They argued that increasing the capacity at Heathrow would be tantamount to putting out an “open for business” sign as Britain prepares to leave the European Union.
“This is a really important moment in the history of this House and the history of this country,” Transport Secretary Chris Grayling told the House of Commons as he appealed for lawmakers to “move on from decades of debate and set, to my mind, a clear path to our future as a global nation in the post-Brexit world.”
Opponents object to the third runway on environmental, noise and financial grounds. Friends of the Earth described it as a “morally reprehensible” move that would result in Heathrow emitting as much carbon as the whole of Portugal.
Greenpeace said that if ministers wouldn’t protect people from toxic air, opponents would ask a court to do so.
John Stewart, a longtime opponent of Heathrow expansion, took to Twitter to lament that the new runway had become a government policy.
“A third runway will turn peaceful areas of London & the Home Counties into torrents of noise as planes pass over at a rate of 1 every 90 seconds,” he said of the towns under the airport’s flight path.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan has pledged to join local government councils in filing legal action seeking to block the expansion and has said Heathrow already exposes the city to more aircraft noise than Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Munich and Madrid combined. He argues that the project would also push toxic emissions above legal limits.
