Westconnex air quality stinks

BY WENDY BACON

Thousands of Sydney residents living close to WestConnex unfiltered ventilation stacks may never know whether their air quality is affected by tunnel emissions, due to the failure of the Sydney Motorway Corporation to place air monitors near their homes.

NSW Planning’s conditions of approval for the M4 East tunnels required the Sydney Motorway Corporation (SMC), which controls WestConnex, to monitor air pollution levels in areas around two stacks continuously for a full year before the tunnels open and for at least two years afterward.

Thousands of residents’ had strongly objected to the M4 East Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on the grounds they they feared the tunnel would negatively impact on local air quality.

The community message was clear. So when the then Minister for Planning Rob Stokes, announced his controversial decision to approve WestConnex’s M4 East tunnel, he stressed that he was imposing “strict and unprecedented” conditions, which included provision for residents living close to the ventilation stacks to have input into decision-making through an Air Quality Community Consultative Committee (AQCC). In 2016, a similar condition was imposed with Mr Stokes’ approval of three more stacks for the New M5 tunnel.

The M4 East Committee was established last June and the monitors turned on in December. The New M5 Committee has been established but the monitors will not be turned on until later this year. Both Committees are chaired by professional mediator and lawyer Steven Lancken. I contacted him for this story but he explained that as an independent chair he was unable to speak to the media, and referred me to the Sydney Motorway Corporation. When I asked why the names of the people on the Committee were not available publicly, he said this was a ‘privacy’ matter.

There are six monitors along the M4 East. (A map can be seen on the Ecotech site at http://airodis.ecotech.com.au/westconnex/index.html ). In Haberfield, there are monitors at Haberfield Public School to the northeast and Ramsay Street to the southeast of the nearby stack. At the Western end of the tunnel In Homebush, there are monitors at Powells Creek, near the junction of Parramatta Road and the M4, and at Allen Reserve, a small park to the east of the Homebush ventilation stack. There are two other monitors along the route.

At the Homebush stack, there are no monitors to the north, south or west and at the Haberfield stack there are no monitors on the southern side of Parramatta Road. This is significant because WestConnex EISs have found that the chances of negative impacts are greater at height, and the unmonitored areas include a number of multistory buildings. Some of these apartment buildings are close to both Parramatta Road and the M4 and so will be impacted by both the road and the stack.

The M4 East planning conditions mandate that air quality results must be measured against national standards. Any exceedances of those standards must be reported to NSW Planning. Unfortunately, although SMC is supposed to be making all data public, data is removed from view after 30 days. Even so, the results so far do nothing to allay serious health concerns.

Monitored levels of PM 2.5 (dangerous fine particulate matter that is linked to cancer and heart disease) are currently showing annual averages well above the national limit of 8 µg/m³.The levels are higher than anything reported by the NSW government last year. Haberfield School has the highest levels of PM 2.5. The Powells Creek levels in Homebush are currently above the annual limit for both PM 10 and PM 2.5. There have been exceedances of the daily average limits of 25 PM 10 µg/m³ at several sites. As expected by those familiar with scientific research on air quality, levels are higher near congested roads and construction sites.

At an important meeting on March 5, there were no representatives present from the St Peters community which is badly affected and has been actively campaigning against the impacts of WestConnex. A spokesperson for the WestConnex Action Group and resident of St Peters Janet Dandy-Ward told City Hub that she was shocked that St Peters was unrepresented. “Our community has been suffering terrible impacts for two years. We were never officially told who is on the Committee. I’m concerned about what the M4 East monitors are telling us about air quality near WestConnex sites. Who knows what it is in St Peters? We never believed that RMS’s constant assurances that the air around us would not be affected by the M5 East and its ventilation stacks.”

The minutes of the Committee meetings are publicly available. The committees received their contextual information about air quality from the NSW Roads and Maritime Services (RMS) which has prejudged the situation and constantly asserted that any impacts on air quality during Westconnex construction will be negligible. The members of the committee were presented with a very narrow range of location options for the monitors. I asked Ecotech, the company setting up and maintaining the monitors, about the location decisions but was told that their staff are unable to comment because they are contracted by SMC. SMC instructed Ecotech where to locate the monitors.

Applications to join the committees were invited from people living or working near the stacks who could make a ‘constructive’ contribution. But not everyone who met the criteria was accepted. For example, Malachy Ward, a retired Haberfield resident with experience in dealing with air quality issues applied on the basis that he represents the Haberfield Association on WestConnex issues and is the grandparent of some Haberfield Public School students. He was rejected. When he asked why he was not chosen, he was told that the standard of applications was ‘very high’. In fact, only two of three required positions for Haberfield residents were filled.

In all there are six RMS and SMC representatives on the M4 East Committee and only five community representatives, not all of whom can always attend meetings when scheduled. There are Council representatives but they’re also not always present due to other commitments.

One member of the New M5 committee Rasmus Torkel has established a website on which he reports on meeting discussions about the stack locations. WestConnex also provides minutes on its website. Mr. Torkel wrote on his website that locations proposed by WestConnex are all on RMS land and “as a consequence, some very good locations were rejected in favour of quite unsatisfactory locations.” One location was rejected because it might be ‘vandalised’.
City Hub has submitted questions to SMC.

Wendy Bacon has campaigned against WestConnex. She is covering air quality issues on her blog at wendybacon.com. Rasmus Torkel’s website is found at http://rasmustorkel.id.au/new_m5_aqccc/