Choosing locations for the air quality monitoring stations may seem like quite an uninspiring topic. It is much simpler to say: "We want filtered stacks". But that would be putting the cart before the horse. What we, the people, are entitled to (unless there are events beyond government or road operator control, such as bush fires) is air quality that satisfies national air quality standards. We are not entitled to RMS/SMC/WestConnex achieving this air quality in any particular way. But to enforce the air quality standards we need to know when they are being breached. If air quality standards are being breached in a location that experiences high impact from the stack but the monitoring stations are in locations of moderate impact where there is no exceedance, then we simply will not know. And then we can't demand remedial measures from the government and/or the road operators.
The previous sections have more general information. This section is about choosing locations for the monitoring stations. There are also separate sections specific to Kingsgrove, Arncliffe and St Peters.
On September 19, 2017, we had our first meeting. We received a lot of general information and we were told that specific locations would be proposed to us in the next meeting which was scheduled for October 10 and then postponed to October 17. We would also be able to propose our own locations.
I spent quite a bit of time familiarising myself with the area around the stacks and taking photographs because I wanted to have locations to offer, in case I wasn't happy with the locations proposed by the project team.
On October 16, one day before the meeting, we received by email the locations proposed by the project team (without information about anticipated pollution). At the beginning of the October 17 meeting, we were given, on paper, diagrams showing not only the stacks, the proposed locations and contour lines (without numbers), showing zones of greater and lesser anticipated pollution increases.
One problem with a lot of the proposed locations was that they were to a greater or lesser extent away from the zones of greatest impact. It is obviously pointless to put monitoring stations where they have no chance of detected instances of the New M5 breaching air quality targets, were such breaches to occur. I expressed that view at the October 17 meeting.
One thing that surprised me was that, at least with the air quality modelling as presented, elevation of an area seemed to make less difference to its pollution exposure than I would have thought. I am a little sceptical about this but I don't have the expertise to refute it. I asked whether the air quality modelling took elevation into account and was assured that it did.
I also said that when picking locations for the monitoring sites, we should favour the portal side of the stack over the opposite side. This idea did not go uncontested but I got support from a Kingsgrove resident.
Some locations drew objections because they are flood-prone and one because it was proposed to be in the habitat being constructed for the Green and Golden Bell Frog at Eve Street.
One constraint with picking locations is that they need to be off the street. You can't put them on a street in lieu of parked cars.
For the March 5, 2018, meeting, we were given the two locations that Sydney Motorway Corporation is intending to use for the two monitoring stations for each stack, plus a third back-up location, in case show-stopping unforeseen problems are encountered at one of the preferred locations. For the back-up monitoring station, we were given the preferred location plus one back-up location. One general observation that was made at the meeting was that all locations that the project team put forward are on RMS land and as the consequence, some very good locations were rejected in favour of quite unsatisfactory locations. I'll cover this in more detail on the pages for the individual stacks.
At the September 10 meeting, the locations were finalised. It appeared that the project team had made some effort to explore alternative sites for Kingsgrove by then but ran into difficulties with Council. There was no representative from Canterbury-Banktown Council, the relevant council, present to refute it. More on that in the Kingsgrove section.