NSW Ports addresses Port Botany ship noises and reveals extent of powers

Thousands of Sydney’s southeast residents have finally got some answers about the recurrent noises keeping them awake at night … but it’s not all good news when it comes to what can be done.

Danny Simpson, of Chifley, had been unable to sleep for two nights due to what sounded like a loud helicopter constantly flying above him when he considered driving down to Port Botany and blocking ships from docking.

“It’s extreme, but I was going nuts,” he said. “I had migraines and even though I hear noises from the port on and off throughout the years, this was by far the worst I’ve ever heard it.”

The man is one of potentially thousands of residents who were affected by an unusually loud ship which docked on July 27-28 at Port Botany – just over a month after the same issue occurred and it was revealed an average of one noise complaint a week had been made in the past year.

People as far as Maroubra complained of the sound every time it popped up, with different descriptions including “drilling in the brain” and the “crashing of loud washing machines”.

Now, the environment manager for NSW Ports has explained what could be causing the ongoing issue, what is being done about it and what power the government arm actually has to stop it.

NSW Ports’ Environment Manager Bryan Beudeker. Picture: supplied

NSW Ports environment manager Bryan Beudeker said the two incidents in July and June were “unusual events” with more complaints than usual. Upon investigating, he found the sound was coming from two ships from the same company. He said the second one, Safeen Prime, was “one of the noisiest ships we’ve had at Port Botany”.

Mr Beudeker explained there were generally two separate noise events coming from the port that caused people to complain.

Chifley resident Danny Simpson says the Port Botany noises are unbearable. Picture: Facebook

The first was the crashing, banging and beeping, caused by containers being loaded and forklift alarms that regulation requires to be fitted with “white noise alarms”– though this was not always the case.

The second, which Mr Beudeker said seemed to be the case with the two recent ships, was a “low frequency noise”.

“That’s more problematic as it travels a greater distance and is exacerbated by bad weather and prevailing westerly winds that blow the noise towards the community, and that was what exacerbated this noise event,” he said.

Mr Beudeker said NSW Ports wrote to the ship’s owner to ask them to get an engineer to assess the ship and explain why their low frequency noise was so loud before it returns, but he was still waiting on a response.

Residents have been complaining of the noises on and off for years. Picture: Seb Haggett

The difficulty was that while NSW Ports could “strongly encourage” companies to take stronger action, they could not actually ban problematic ships from returning to the port until the issues were fixed, because the International Maritime Organisation is responsible for the rules and regulations of ship operations.

“They operate under international flags,” Mr Beudeker said.

“We are working with Ports Australia to … look at how we can advocate for stronger legislation on ship regulation from an international perspective.”

Despite lacking enforceable power, Mr Beudeker said he had had success in working with the owners of previously noisy ships.

One such group of vessels were the Rio Vessels fleet, one of which visits Port Botany every week.

They were the source of most complaints last year, but after Mr Beudeker investigated and spoke with the operator, he discovered one ship had a particularly loud engine.

Mr Beudeker said the owner was not aware it had been so loud, and in response, made the loud engine run with its purpose built silencer.

“They’ve been doing that since November, and there’s been a measurable reduction in noise since,” he said.

NSW Ports is updating its monitoring system to try to understand the different noises at and around Port Botany. In January, it installed an extra noise monitor in the area, taking the total to four.

“One is a fairly high tech directional noise monitor that sits on the roof of our office building and I look at those noise monitors to see if there are potential issues,” Mr Beudeker said.

“They provide good information but they don’t always provide the complete picture, as monitoring noise is very complex”.

Mr Beudeker said part of the upgrade was bringing in data from the Bureau of Meteorology to help predict how upcoming weather may affect certain sounds.

When the upgrade is complete, there will also be a register on visiting ships so Mr Beudeker can contact the master and ask them to provide information on their containers, engines and other factors that court impact noise.

“We might see a ship is more noisy on one visit and less noisy the next, so we are hoping that combined with the other data we can start to identify the noisy ships and take that back to shipping lines and say ‘you’ve been identified as a ship that’s noisier than most and here’s what can you do to reduce it’,” he said.

As for when the problematic Safeen Prime ship would return to Port Botany and whether it will still have the sound issues, that came down to how the owner would co-operate with requests to co-operate. For now, it is a waiting game.