Minister Scully again yesterday showed what a poor grasp he has of the M5 East stack issue. In another display of Ministerial hot air, he again tried to bury this $850 million health disaster under a stack of misinformation and viciously attacked anyone with a counter view.

Mr Scully said: “Electrostatic precipitators are not proven, they are still experimental, and on many occasions they do not work. Those filtration systems are a high-tech placebo, and nothing else”

The Norwegian Road Authority report he quotes from, signed by the RTA, shows that electrostatic precipitators have been used for over 10 years in Norway, where they are needed, as they have in Japan, Korea and Europe. The $300,000 international tunnel ventilation workshop in Sydney over a year ago concluded that they represented established technology, with high efficiency in removing particles.

We would like to suggest to the Minister that the only “high-tech placebo” would have to be the RTA, pretending to be knowledgeable about tunnel ventilation!

If Mr Scully was indeed after the facts, why did he choose to send his RTA spin doctors (Paul Willoughby (Press & Television 'spokesperson'), and Jay Stricker (General Manager Environment)) to Norway? There are no tunnels remotely comparable to the M5 East elsewhere in Australia (or Norway). One has to go to Japan to find tunnels of a similar size and traffic mix, and find them filtered. The RTA has been trying to justify a flawed decision for the last 4 years. The RTA was also supposed to deliver the 3rd international independent review of tunnel ventilation (carried out by Connel Wagner) in June. It has still not been tabled!

Yet Mr Scully continually refuses to acknowledge the unique problems of the M5 East. It has only one massive, complicated outlet for 4 kilometres of tunnel, in a valley. It will dump fumes from 80 000 vehicles a day, 20% diesel, on workers and residents. It has high running costs and is inefficient in dispersing pollutants. Mr Scully believes that the exhaust is dispersed, “high into the atmosphere’. In fact, the M5 East exhaust is “dispersed” onto homes on the surrounding ridges!!!

Mr Scully is correct in saying that electrostatic precipitators will remove only the particulate matter—they will not deal with the gases coming from the exhaust systems of cars and trucks, they will not remove oxides of nitrogen, they will not remove carbon monoxide and they will not remove sulfur dioxide or hydrocarbons. But his solution is worse than a placebo-to do nothing about any of them!

The removal of cancer causing particulates has to be better than nothing!! Every independent expert who has looked at the stack, including the CSIRO has said that it is in a bad position. That is the main reason why it needs filtration along with other measures to ensure dispersal of other pollutants such as NO2. But the RTA is still resisting increasing the speed of the fans to ensure better dispersal of NO2 and other gases! And adding insult to injury, the Minister’s Parliamentary Secretary, the Hon Reba Meagher is concerned about the reduced life of the fans if they are kept running at night so people don’t choke in their beds!

Contrary to what Mr Scully has stated, no community group has ever stated that electrostatic precipitators remove 100% of particulate matter and should be used 24 hours a day. This deliberately misrepresents the community position.

Just as he continually overstates the cost of fitting filtration ($40 million). Mr Scully knows he can have filtration installed for as little as $11 million, with guaranteed 90% efficiency to remove the most harmful fine particles. Stop filtering the information and filter the fumes. Enough hot air. Just do it!