Tumbalong Park pollution monitor closes

by Emma Rugg
Pyrmont and Ultimo community groups are still breathing heavily over pollution around the Cross City Tunnel (CCT), following the closure of two air-quality monitors late last year.

The City of Sydney shares residents’ concerns: ‘The stations are an important source of publicly accessible information for those communities about the impacts of the tunnel on air quality,’ said a spokesperson.

As a condition of the CCT’s approval, in 2005 emissions monitors were installed for a minimum of three years at Tumbalong Park in Darling Harbour and Mary Ann Park in Ultimo.

A NSW Department of Planning spokesperson explained they approved the closure of the monitors because they were ‘satisfied that the project was meeting the required ambient air quality criteria.’

Although the tunnel’s emissions are unfiltered, an RTA spokesperson said: ‘The air quality standards for the Cross City Tunnel are among the toughest in the world.’

However traffic in the tunnel is still well below its predicted numbers of 90,000 vehicles per day.

‘The impact on actual air quality when the tunnel is at expected operating levels has not been tested and will not be tested without the stations,’ says the City of Sydney.

Additionally, pollution in and around Sydney’s tunnels is still behind European standards according to an air quality report released by The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) last November.

Another group to recommend that the monitoring sites remained open was The CCT Air Quality Community Consultative Committee, established as another condition of the tunnel. But that group was closed down by the government last year.

Other groups like Ultimo Village Voice are still fighting to reinstate the Tumbalong site, and install more monitors in the CBD region.

‘We originally wanted the site in Harris St but were told the pollution levels were too high there, so they closed it down,’ said UVV Chair Yimmy Seifert.

‘The Tumbalong site isn’t ideal, but it’s better than nothing. Without it, what chance is there of installing others sites in the CBD, in better locations”

The NHMRC report confirms that long-term exposure to air pollution increases the risk of cancer and cardiorespiratory disease, but stresses the difficulty in distinguishing between the impacts of tunnels and general neighbourhood pollution.

It claims emission monitoring isn’t the best way to assess the impacts, instead advocating surveys of residents’ health like those conducted around the M5 tunnel. But the RTA claims that in the last instance they found there was no evidence of adverse health problems associated with the tunnel.

An ideal solution would be to filter tunnel emissions, and while the RTA is about to begin trialling filtration on the M5 East, there are no plans to extend it to the CCT.

‘The M5 East Tunnel was chosen because of the high percentage of heavy vehicles using this road,’ said an RTA spokesperson. ‘The traffic mix in the Cross City Tunnel is very different, with a much higher rate of light vehicle use.’

The RTA also claims their own air-quality monitoring system near the CCT is sufficient, with data published frequently on the Cross City Tunnel website.

The Department of Environment recommends concerned residents visit the National Pollution Inventory website at www.npi.gov.au for up-to-date information on their communities.