Council coughs up for air monitoring ahead of smoke stacks
North Sydney Council is spending big to install air quality monitoring ahead of the massive Beaches Link Tunnel construction project.
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North Sydney Council is taking the final step to install air quality monitors over tunnel smoke stack fears.
The council is expected to cough up about $160,000 for the project and at its monthly meeting it is set to decide who will run the project.
Three companies have made a bid to monitor the air for a year in St Leonards Park before construction of the Beaches Link Tunnel.
North Sydney Council asked the State Government to monitor the air in the local government area but this has not happened.
It installed air quality monitoring at Naremburn.
“The proposed tunnel will have entry points and ventilation stacks in the North Sydney local government area,” a report by the council’s team leader on environmental health Fiona Mulcahy said.
“This has given rise to much community concern, not only around potential increase in traffic volumes, but also around potential air quality deterioration.”
Earlier this year the council wrote to the State Government requesting it provide filtration on the smoke stacks for the tunnel.
Georgina Taylor from the Northern Residents Tunnel Action Group (NORTAG) welcomed the council’s push for air quality monitoring.
She is also demanding the stacks are filtered and is critical of the State Government for not providing monitoring within North Sydney.
“Council shouldn’t have to be doing it,” Ms Taylor said.
“We are very pleased (with North Sydney Council) and we hope the data will become publicly available.”
Ms Taylor criticised the State Government for not releasing the data from the Naremburn monitoring station. It is understood have started running over a year ago.
A spokesman for Transport for NSW said air quality monitoring will be carried out at all stages of the tunnel project. The locations of air quality monitoring stations were selected by air quality experts to gather data that is representative of conditions across the project area.
“The tunnels will be built to meet strict air quality standards using state-of-the-art ventilation and tunnel design,” the spokesman said.
Air quality monitoring will be carried out for 12 months before and 24 months after completion of the project.
The Advisory Committee on Tunnel Air Quality’s Initial Report on Tunnel Air Quality found that emissions from well-designed road tunnels cause a negligible change to surrounding air quality.
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