North Shore Community Newsletter 6 – Beaches Tunnel

There can be no excuse – a Beaches’ Tunnel must be a clean tunnel; it must result in much of the through traffic being removed from  Military Road

Sydney sits in a basin, more like a shoe box with one end open that, with certain weather patterns, traps air resulting in a build-up of pollution levels.

Not all that long-ago Sydney was plagued with “smog” created by the particle emissions  from the likes of the Balmain and White Bay Power stations – we are at risk of revisiting  the past with “smog” from chimney stacks of the road tunnels.

We simply must take every opportunity to protect and improve air quality

• The Beaches’ Tunnel presents an opportunity to do just that – to filter out  contaminates.

The State Government wants to take the contaminated air from the tunnel and disgorge it through chimney stacks in to our community and in the Sydney basin.

The State Government is missing the point – it needs to:

relentlessly work at improving air quality (not hide its failure to do so by pumping the contaminated air high up and out of “site”). invest in filtration equipment on the Beaches’ Tunnel – it’s simply a cost of cleaning up and protecting our environment.

Filtration is proven:

• it’s in use in Europe and Japan – e.g. Madrid’s orbital road and the Mount-Blanc tunnel;
• and capable of reducing particulate contamination by up to 90%.

What’s needed? The State Government, its Premier and our local member to commit to  a clean tunnel; to commit to filtration being an integral part of the design and to commit now.

There’s one other commitment that’s needed – it’s to allow our community to retake “possession” of Military Road by severely reducing the volume of through traffic – when all has been said and done, isn’t the Beaches’ tunnel there to take through traffic off our roads.