[Forum] So, the State Government sells off a state asset, coal-fired power generator, Vales Point Power Station, for a song, and we, the public, again pay the too high price for the extra pollution that results.
Mannering Park Progress Association has been waging a sustained campaign to make the air and water quality cleaner for everyone here and further afield.
We wrote a detailed submission when the pollution limits were under review with substantial evidence of how the power station could contain 95 percent of its polluting emissions.
The emissions allowances haven’t changed since the power station was built in the 1960s and fall miserably short of world’s best practice.
Developing nations such as China have better standards than we do for the noxious gases and toxic heavy metals emissions as well as the particulate expulsions of which PM2.5 is the most insidious.
Needless to say, all submissions were ignored by the State Government and emission rate allowances remain unchanged.
So, was it a surprise to read in the Sydney Morning Herald, April 7, that the dangerous PM2.5 emissions from Vales Point have increased by 3,000 percent over the past six years?
Well, sadly, no.
However, it is deeply disturbing to find that your Government is prioritising the profits of a privately owned business over the health if its citizens.
If you think because you don’t happen to live in the shadows of the power station as we do, that you are safe, think again.
PM2.5 particles have been found in NSW that originated in South Australia, so you, your family and loved ones and every other living object is affected by this pollution to some degree.
According to a State of Global Air study released in 2018, exposure to PM2.5 emissions contributed to the death of 4.1M people around the globe, as reported in Sydney Morning Herald, April 7.
Dr Bob Vickers, Singleton GP, and expert in the effects of pollution from power stations, has stated that we, who live near coal fired power stations, have an 18 percent increased risk of the serious side effects of COVID-19. (ABC Radio 702, April 8).
More risk for our residents.
Will anybody who has the power to place controls on these emissions and reverse these dire statistics remedy the situation for us on the Central Coast and elsewhere?
We can only hope, because, so far, we can’t even get more air monitors after years of requests and lobbying.
We hope somebody cares, we impatiently await.
Email, Apr 20
Mannering Park Progress Association,
President, Kel Wynn.