Members of the Sustainable Tarras group opposed to the now shelved Tarras International Airport have been quietly celebrating their win.

Last week they had a toast with a bottle of Maori Point Gold Digger, “but it’ll be drunk with a healthy dose of scepticism as Christchurch Airport remains our neighbour,” their Facebook page said.

The group thanked the community for all of its support leading up to last week’s major decision by Christchurch Holdings Limited (CCHL) to park up its airport project in Central Otago.

Sustainable Tarras has been fighting the proposal for the past three years, including researching material and sending it to the Christchurch City Council (CCC).

“We’ve been doing a lot of work behind the scenes to understand the industry and get a sense of the landscape where it’s operating in,” group member Suze Keith said.

Investing in a major project like this in the current cost of living crisis was a folly, Suze said, and the group knew the financial situation made it extremely unlikely to happen.

In a letter to airport bosses CCHL last week, the CCC finance and performance committee said it was concerned that resources were being expended in developing this project, “which we estimate to have a very low chance of being implemented in the next decade or longer.”

CCC made it clear it would not be able to provide equity or debt funding to the CCHL group, and said engagement had “fallen short” of its expectations regarding consultation with them.

Sustainable Tarras was made up of just eight members, with support from people all over New Zealand, who meet fortnightly to discuss their research and keep up with CCC agendas and papers related to the airport.

Suze said from what they had discovered recently, it appeared basically CCHL had “built their own sandpit to play in because the others won’t let them play in theirs.”

But, the last say must come from former Air New New Zealand sustainability advisor Sr Jonathon Porritt who told Carbon News last week that the idea of a new airport at Tarras was “completely bonkers,” from a commercial point of view.