2016-03-16
Ms DUNN (Eastern Metropolitan) — My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Roads and Road Safety. I refer to a recent Age article headed 'CityLink-Tulla widening a “failure of duty of care” for Strathmore school students' health?', published on 6 March and written by Gina McColl. The article suggests that the 1600 students at Strathmore Secondary College are facing increased health risks such as severe asthma or cardiovascular disease due to an overpass being constructed within metres of school classrooms due to the Tullamarine Freeway widening. The action I seek from the minister is that he immediately cease construction on the Tullamarine widening project while full and thorough modelling of the risks of the project to the neighbouring school are undertaken, including installation of pollution monitoring facilities on the site to verify the actual localised pollution that children are exposed to.
The article reports that experts declared the project a failure of duty of care, voicing their concerns over the macro modelling that Aecom, a technical consultancy company, has used as part of the Transurban assessment of the project. Experts are concerned that this assessment fails to take into account key factors such as micro-exposures of some communities or the stop-start nature of the traffic on the new bridge. Of concern was the reported response by VicRoads acting director Peter Holcombe Henley, who is quoted as saying, 'At the end of the day, there's a value for money equation'. If the quote is correct, the response by Mr Holcombe Henley is alarming, pitting the cost of a road against the cost to public health.
The air pollution modelling done so far has been completely inadequate for a number of reasons. Firstly, the baseline data was extrapolated from air monitoring in Footscray, which is a long way from the school and the very northern end of the project. No actual air monitoring has been done, so this is all just guesswork and cannot be relied upon for accuracy. Secondly, the figures are based on acceptable levels under national environment protection measures that are now outdated, as they were updated in December 2015 to be stricter. Thirdly, there were a limited range of pollutants considered. Critically, PM2.5 was not considered, and it is the smallest and most deadly particulate matter. Also ozone, land and sulphur dioxide were not considered despite their monitoring and reporting being required under the National Environment Protection Council ambient air quality measures.
Finally, I make the point that this background data, even if it were taken locally, would not reflect the pollution that will actually be breathed in by the children by the bridge during peak hour. These background air quality assessments are totally inadequate to assess the risk posed to an asthmatic student, as the background data is collected in locations remote from the point source and in relation to particulate matter they are measured over 24 hours, which softens out the peaks in exposure to make it appear to be within acceptable limits.