Plans for a new airport east of Toronto are back on the radar -- rekindling a decades old debate about whether the city needs or wants the facility.

The Greater Toronto Airports Authority announced revised plans on Wednesday to build a $2-billion Pickering airport which, it said, would serve as a "regional reliever".

The plan would see the Pickering airport open by 2012 for general purposes including recreational and company aircraft, as well as flying schools.

By 2032, the new airport will have built a passenger terminal that will accommodate about 10 million passengers a year. That would be about 20 per cent of the 50 million travellers who will then be going through Pearson airport in the northwest part of Toronto.

Airport authorities say the new facility would generate $5-billion a year.

Opponents have already started mobilizing, with a small but noisy and determined demonstration Wednesday afternoon in Pickering.

"We don't want it or need it," one protestor's sign read.

Another protest sign called the airport "Ontario's Mirabel," a reference to the controversial facility north of Montreal that was built in the 1970s and which just recently stopped serving passenger planes.

Stephen Frederick, president of Voters Organized to Cancel Airport Lands and about two dozen other people were picketing against the airport near the GTAA Pickering office.

Frederick told CTV's Toronto affiliate, CFTO News, "The airport system in southern Ontario is operating at about 35 per cent of total capacity. We do not need another airport for at least 20 years."

"Pearson will always be the international major facility but clearly there is a need for regional facilities," GTAA Vice President Steve Shaw said.

"General aviation needs to be accommodated. Pearson cannot handle that."

The battle over Pickering first flared 32 years ago.

The government purchased 7,350 hectares of land in north Pickering in 1972, displacing about 2,000 people.

Project thrown out

The project was thrown out, following public and provincial criticism.

Of the original land, 2,251 hectares is reserved as green space on the south slope of the Oak Ridges Moraine.

Another 800 hectares is part of the Rouge Valley

That leaves less than 4,500 hectares of the expropriated land for the new airport -- 2.5 times the size of Pearson.

It has been used partly for agricultural purposes. Laws imposed by Ottawa in the late 1990s meant the land was held for airport development.

Frederick calls the airport a "complete waste of resources."

"The whole issue of an airport in Pickering has been divisive from Day 1," Pickering Mayor Dave Ryan told The Globe and Mail.

"It's been problematic for us in that it has been there for 30 years without much movement, one way or the other. It's good that this is going to bring it to a conclusion."

Still, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty wants more information on the Pickering plan, especially how the new Toronto plan would impact on activity at the airport in Hamilton, which is southwest of Toronto.

The Hamilton airport serves about nine million passengers a year.

"One of the questions that I'm asking is `What about the future of the Hamilton airport?'," McGuinty said.

"I've got a real concern about some of the challenges that Hamilton has been up against recently and we'll see how the Pickering proposal fits in with all that."

The federal government will have the final say after conducting an environmental assessment on the green space, which could take three to four years.

As they fight the Pickering plan, the protesters have an ally: Canada's airline operators, who say the plan is bad for business.

"We would be frankly quite disappointed if the airport authority started making major commitments to development out there," said Cliff Mackey of the Air Transport Association.

"They must focus immediately on their cost problems."

A new report says Pearson in Toronto is second in the world only to Tokyo's Narita airport when it comes to takeoff and landing fees.

Last year, Air Canada and other airlines were paying more than $3,300 US. Now Pearson has told airlines it's going to cost raise those fees by 18 per cent.

Pearson is already the most expensive place in North America to land a plane. Atlanta, one the world's busiest airports, is the cheapest in North America at just $146 for the same plane. The cost in Los Angeles is $618, while Calgary is $821 and Vancouver $866.

With files from CTV's David Akin