Digging up dirt on Westconnex

BY PAUL CLARK

Inner West residents have found themselves living in ghost towns after the government acquired homes for Westconnex too quickly, while others are facing a vile stench coming from construction sites near the Westconnex corridor.

But the NSW Government has emphasised what it says are the benefits of the WestConnex project, including better transport connectivity for western Sydney and reduced journey times for cars and trucks.

Opponents point to the huge cost of the project and a relative lack of investment in public transport. The impacts on local communities are easily overlooked by those not directly affected, but are significant.

One such impact is when homes are acquired for the motorway, and families are forced to move, but then the homes remain. 13 homes in Concord that were acquired by the State Government for demolition to make way for WestConnex New M4 works between late 2013 and January 2015 remain in place today after the motorway plans changed. Some have now been rented out by the government, while others remain vacant until the state decides what to do with them.

State MP for Strathfield Jodi McKay says that her constituents fear the government will sell the homes off to developers who will overdevelop the sites to the detriment of the area. Ms McKay, the Shadow Minister for Transport and Shadow Minister for Roads, Maritime and Freight, says the situation shows that the government moved too quickly with acquisitions of homes once it decide to push the project through. “It’s indicative of the poor planning of the entire WestConnex project,” she said.

Ms McKay pointed out that the residents from 13 homes were required to sell to make way for a motorway interchange, which was then placed elsewhere. “So these residents were forced out of their community unnecessarily,” she said.

“This neighbourhood was gutted by a decision the RMS made [to acquire these properties], which was the wrong decision.”

Meanwhile in St Peters, those residents who did not lose their homes have gained a hideous stink to go with the dust and noise of construction.

The WestConnex St Peters interchange construction site is located on top of the former Alexandria landfill dump. The site was meant to be ‘remediated’ or cleaned up before construction commenced, but this did not clean up leachate (water that has been in contact with waste) on the site.

Spokesperson for the WestConnex Action Group Rhea Liebmann says that the smell appears to emerge when excavators hit one of the pockets of leachate. “When they hit it, it begins to stink,” she says.

Ms Liebmann says that the Sydney Motorway Corporation claimed in May that the original complaints about the smell, made at the end of March, had been addressed.

While action was taken to address the original complaints, Ms Liebmann says there have been at least four more serious outbreaks of the smell since then. “The EPA had complaints about the smell going back to mid-March,” she says.

“At the end of March the EPA issued the contractors with a notice to fix the smell. When the smell happens again basically they just issue another notice.”

The main issue, says the WestConnex Action Group, is that the smell minimisation measures used to clean up outbreaks don’t work and there seem to be no sanctions or fines against the construction contractors.

“The EPA, the Department of Planning and even NSW Public Health officers have all visited the site but it seems that the smell is still ‘under investigation’. They are still deciding what to do,” says Ms Liebmann.

Assurances that the smell is not dangerous are cold comfort for the residents affected while the agencies decide what, if anything, will be done about it. This seems to be the nature of the WestConnex project: so large that nobody on the outside really knows what’s going on inside it.

The NSW Government recently announced a plan to sell at least 51 per cent of the Sydney Motorway Corporation by mid-2018. Ms McKay says that there is already insufficient information available to the public about how Sydney Motorway Corporation goes about delivering WestConnex. Anyone who has tried to interpret a WestConnex graphic can attest to that.

“This sale was never mentioned in the WestConnex business case,” she said. “The project is based on a financial model that is no longer current.”

Ms McKay says that Labor will again seek to pressure the Government into supporting legislation to hold the Sydney Motorway Corporation to the same accountability and transparency measures as other Government agencies.

“The WestConnex project must have parliamentary and public oversight. If it refuses to support the legislation, the Government will once again trample on long established principles of public and Parliamentary scrutiny,” she said.