Stacks of Trouble for State Labor
The same week the State government cancelled Sydney Metro’s “railway to nowhere” in late February, the new Kenneally government also cancelled the nation’s first air pollution filtering scheme on the M5 tunnel. For years residents have fought to have the smokestack on the tunnel filtered. The M5 tunnel stretches southwest from the airport: all vehicles (including diesel trucks heading away from the Sydney’s major port at Botany Bay) are funnelled into a cavernous, potentially cancerous tunnel.
In 2008, the federal government released a report, which found: “Accrued effects from repeated tunnel use might include small increases in lifetime risk of cancer, and potential for increased bronchitic events or respiratory infection.” In particular, the report found the M5 East is one of the most polluted tunnels in the world, justifying Australia’s first filtration pilot program. The cost of retrofitting a filter onto the M5 stack was $70 million for the eastbound tunnel alone. In February, just weeks away from launching Labor’s landmark air quality project, the Kenneally government cancelled plans to spend a further $20 million filtering the westbound tunnel.
Less than a month after Macquarie Street derailed Sydney Metro and stuffed up the M5’s green machine filtration pilot– the cash strapped RTA also lodged a DA with the City of Sydney to sell off a vacant lot with development rights for a residential apartment block directly beneath another unfiltered, toxic smokestack in Surry Hills. In mid March, Independent Member Clover Moore told the Parliament. “The Roads and Traffic Authority has asked the City of Sydney council to approve an application for new apartments and commercial offices adjacent to the Surry Hills Eastern Distributor ventilation stack. The City of Sydney council will not approve the application without filtration of the stack, which is already a precondition of consent… Air quality monitoring should provide accurate information in the most heavily trafficked and densely populated area of not only Sydney but Australia so that data can be analysed and compared over time and used for effective planning.“ Last year, the RTA pulled the plug on two air pollution monitoring systems around the Cross City Tunnel’s unfiltered stack. Several years before that RTA also stopped monitoring emissions from the Eastern Distributor’s stacks.
The Eastern Distributor is Sydney’s second oldest tunnel after the Harbour tunnel. And it stinks. Each year nearly 18 million trips are taken through Darlinghurst’s real underground on the M1 from Surry Hills to William Street, earning the toll collector nearly $80 million per year from Sydney’s real Golden Mile. Each day tens of thousands of tons of toxic particulates are pumped out of two unfiltered stacks. At the northern end of the tunnel, at the William Street offramp (where the Eastern Distributor intersects the Cross City tunnel) an unfiltered smokestack silently gases the unsuspecting village of East Sydney. Due east of the stack, thousands of schoolgirls attend Sydney’s Church of England Girls Grammar School (SCEGGS), and due west of the stack along Stanley Street, the café owners should know a thing or two about outdoor smoking. Just two blocks over from Bill and Toni’s the Eastern Distributor’s unfiltered smokestack is disguised as an innocuous tower. Directly under the stack, along the eastside of the tunnel’s exit ramp, a vacant block has been covered in asphalt for years. At the prompting of the City of Sydney, residents approached the RTA with a request to start a community garden on the site, only to be told that the RTA has bigger plans. Across the street from the tarred over lot, local residents have maintained another vacant block as a de facto community garden along Bourke Street. Rather than providing carbon offsets at the site of the stack, the RTA plans to develop residential units under the warmth and shade of the Eastern Distributor smokestack.
State Labor is truly on the nose. From Turella to Lane Cove to Darlinghurst and Surry Hills, Sydneysiders have sucked in the State government’s toxic emissions long enough. On May 23rd, under the shadow of the Eastern Distributor’s northbound stack, concerned residents will rally at the corner of Stanley and Palmer Streets at the conclusion of the annual Stanley Street festival. The rally will be addressed by Green MLC Sylvia Hale, who says, “The Government’s failure to filter the exhaust stack on the eastern distributor is yet another example of its failure to put the health of the community first.” The Attack the Stack coalition is demanding that the RTA establish a green corridor on its vacant blocks adjacent to the tunnel’s stacks. In the lead up to the upcoming State election, locals are demanding that emissions from the stack are monitored and that the next State government filter stacks as a matter of public health policy. In 2006, in the lead up to the last State election the Liberals promised they would filter tunnel stacks, if elected. Following next year’s State election there is every chance a Liberal government will share the balance of power with a coalition of Greens and Independents such as MP Clover Moore. Filtering Sydney’s toxic smokestacks could be more than a pipedream.
