WestConnex: Air pollution at M4 East works at Haberfield
Opponents of WestConnex believe they have damning evidence of the health risks after poor air quality readings at Haberfield indicated officials may have underestimated the impact of their works.
Opponents of WestConnex believe they have damning evidence of the health risks after poor air quality readings at Haberfield indicated officials may have underestimated the impact of their works.
Construction, work vehicles and tunnelling have been a daily occurrence at Haberfield since M4 East works began in 2016.
Two three-lane tunnels stretch to Concord, and are expected to open this year.
Contractors installed six air monitors in 2017 to monitor whether works (fumes, dust) affected air quality.
These are at Allen St and Powells Creek at Homebush, Concord Oval, St Lukes Park, Haberfield Public School and Ramsay St (Haberfield).
The monitors measure the level of pollutants, called particulate matter, smaller than 2.5 micrometres (PM 2.5).
The annual standard limit is 8µg/m3 (micrograms per cubic metre).
The six monitors’ results, collected over 12 months, all exceeded this measure.
Three of the sites had the worst air quality in NSW. These were Ramsay St (11.6µg/m3), Haberfield Public School (11.2) and Powells Creek (10.2). The results are in contractor Ecotech’s report on the WestConnex website.
WestConnex officials say air quality will improve in some areas due to traffic moving underground.
A spokeswoman for the organisation said air quality at the six sites would be monitored for two years after the M4 East opens.
The results would help determine if there was any impact on air quality, she said.
Contractor Aecom in 2014 assessed the future air quality for WestConnex.
It did not estimate levels at the six sites in 2019.
But it did so for 2021, after the opening of the tunnel. Levels would range from 8 to 9µg/m3, Aecom estimated.
Yet retired UTS journalism professor Wendy Bacon said the study predicted only about 0.3µg/m3 improvement after the tunnel opened.
The current readings meant Aecom’s calculations were likely wrong, according to Ms Bacon, and people would be exposed to worse pollution.
The WestConnex critic declined to speculate on the cause of the current pollution levels.
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“I can’t say what’s causing it. That needs to be investigated,” she said.
“But it was a major mistake not to count construction emissions and the diesel used across Haberfield in the studies.”
If the studies were wrong, Ms Bacon said, so were the health assessments.
She has published her own report warning of the results.
Haberfield resident Jozefa Sobski was concerned by the poor air quality.
She said she assumed construction was partly responsible.
She worried about vehicle fumes from the toll road being ventilated into the air, unfiltered, once the motorway opens.
“If it knocks five years off our lives, we’re not going to know,” she said.
“But it’s the kids we’re concerned about.”
A Roads and Maritime Services spokesman said air quality assessments for the M4 East and New M5 showed regional air quality was unlikely to change due to WestConnex.
“WestConnex will result in improvements in some areas where traffic uses the underground motorway tunnels instead of surface roads,” he said.
Ventilation facilities were designed to safely disperse cars’ emissions from the tunnels without impacting the surrounding areas, he said.
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