PLEASE TAKE ACTION NOW BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE:
1. Sign our petition and share with friends (we don’t recommend paying Change.org to promote our petition as this just goes into their general money bucket)
2. Write to the Environment Minister urging him to direct the EPA to listen to new evidence on why the stacks must be filtered.
3. Share our campaign video with friends, family and social sites.
Backgrounder:
The West Gate Tunnel Project (WGTP) vent stacks are being built without filtration. The stacks are nothing more than fancy chimneys that will pump out harmful air pollution over the suburbs of Spotswood, South Kingville, Altona North, Newport, Yarraville, Seddon and Footscray in Melbourne’s inner west for decades to come.
This isn’t new news, we’ve known this since 2017 but we know have one more chance to stop this pollution before the tunnel opens in late 2025 and protect the health of our communities.
In 2017 an Inquiry and Advisory Committee (EES) was set by the Vic government to look at the impacts of the WGT. This committee heard evidence from some of Australia’s’ top respiratory health experts who argued for filtration. After weighing up the evidence, the Committee recommended filtration to be installed, ready for day one of operations.
Unfortunately the then Planning Minister Richard Wynne was swayed by the EPA’s submission – to build the stacks so that filtration could be installed in the future, if needed! However with no set “trigger” level of pollution at which authorities will act, we believe there is no plan in place for it to ever happen.
This one chance is being lead by lawyers at Environmental Justice Australia on behalf of MTAG. You may have seen the recent story in The Age and also on Seven News and Nine News. We are hoping to pressure the EPA, through the Environment Minister Mr Steve Dimopoulos, to hold a ‘Conference of Interested Persons’ to hear new evidence on why the vent stacks must be filtered before they issue an operating license to Transurban.
Since 2017, the body of evidence on the harmful impacts of diesel emissions has increased exponentially. So has damming local hospital admission data that wasn’t available then, which paints a very alarming picture of the health of our community. The City of Maribyrnong has some of the highest rates of asthma, lung cancer, stroke and heart disease in Australia – diseases which all have a strong correlation to air pollution. In 2023 Maribyrnong Council declared a Health Emergency because of the impacts of truck related diesel exhaust pollution.
Another big change is the 2021 Environment Act which the EPA now operates under. These new laws state that the EPA must implement a prevention-based approach to environment and health protection. The decision to not filter unless harm has been caused is a clear example of old school decision making that is not considered appropriate or lawful any more.
Up to 16,000 dirty diesel polluting trucks will use the tunnel daily. That’s millions of trucks every year. These unfiltered vent stacks will pump that pollution over Melbourne’s inner west suburbs for decades to come.