A Te Arawa marae has threatened court action to delay transtasman flights if its buildings next to Rotorua Airport are not soundproofed beforehand.
Rotorua District Council says it has no obligation to install soundproofing before flights begin in December but is to make an offer this week.
Two commissioners gave the airport company resource consent in 2007 to extend the runway.
Part of their decision included Plan Change 32 - a document outlining aircraft noise controls and land use controls. A condition of that consent was that the district council had to provide acoustic treatment to Ruamata Marae buildings when Plan Change 32 came into effect and within six months after the commissioners' decision.
Ruamata Marae Trust member Renee Kiriona said no official offer had yet been made for soundproofing the marae or the kura and she questioned why it had not been done by now.
Miss Kiriona said the council had told the trust the work was "highly unlikely" to be completed before transtasman flights begin on December 12 because it needed to tender the work out and that could take months.
"If the council can work miracles at the airport and find tens of millions of dollars to do it, then surely they can insulate a few humble buildings at a marae and kura, especially when the people there have been fully co-operating with council's engineers for the past two years on this very matter."
Miss Kiriona said consultants had visited and they had seen presentations but no official offer had been made.
The noise treatment was a priority but the council was not treating it as such, she said.
There were four buildings at the marae and the trust wanted soundproofing at least put in the ancestral meeting house and the dining room before transtasman flights begin.
If those two buildings were not fitted with soundproofing by December, court action to stop flights was a possibility.
She said there were health and safety issues at stake for the children at the kura and those using the marae.
"We are really freaking out at the pa. We don't know what to expect."
The council's district engineer, Nico Claassen, said the council had been working closely with the marae trust since the middle of last year when Plan Change 32 came into effect and there was a lot of work involved in terms of understanding the marae's needs and building relationships with them.
"You can't just rock up at a marae and say 'we are going to noise-treat your building'. You have to build a relationship and that's what we have done."
Now that the council had completed a range of technical assessments relating to aspects such as noise, architecture, building and resource consents, health, fire and safety, the council was in a position to make an offer this week.
Details would not be made public until after the trust had seen them.
Previously the council has said that soundproofing could include air conditioning so windows can remain closed, ceiling insulation and an extractor fan.
Mr Claassen said the work would be carried out in accordance with the consent but the effects of just two transtasman flights a week would be significantly less than the previous daily domestic services.
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