RAAF keeps mum on secret Port Stephens pollution reports
Port Stephens locals have been putting up with the noise of RAAF defence operations at the Salt Ash Air Weapons Range for decades. Yet the government has greeted their concerns with deafening silence.
The government is sitting on key reports on the health implications of these operations. So it is no surprise residents are claiming a cover-up.
Successive federal governments have ignored requests for their release.
The question is why? Locals can only assume it is because the reports show that the Hornet fighter jet operations do not meet a number of environmental standards.
It is time residents were shown documents on the levels of noise and toxic pollution linked to RAAF operations around their homes.
The Environmental Impact Statement and health effects study of Hornet noise, undertaken to introduce this aircraft, should be released to the public at the Williamtown Consultative Forum being held in Port Stephens today.
The Hornet has been operating over the Salt Ash Range since 1985, with the aircrafts' weapons being fired over local homes.
People living under the Hornet's flight path have suffered the fallout of unburnt fuel, fuel ash and micro fine Beryllium dust from the weapons fired.
Watertanks and the Tomago sandbeds aquifer that feeds water to Port Stephens and Newcastle are also at risk of pollution.
My office has received many complaints over the years about the training operations, with noise pollution a key problem.
One recent report recorded the sound level at 97 decibels inside a house when the RAAF flew over. Outside the sound level was 106 decibels. I understand that the sound level when hearing damage commences is 86 decibels.
Yet there has been no advice to residents about the need to wear ear protection.
As one local so succinctly puts it, "WorkCover won't allow everyday workers in factories to be submitted to this sustained level of noise, so why are they allowing another government department to subject a large populated area to such a high level of noise?"
"We, the populace in the local vicinity of the Salt Ash weapons range, are all victims of friendly fire".
Just yesterday I was informed that the Hornet began operating along a different flight path. This is occurring without any new analysis of potential impacts, in line with Australian Noise Exposure Forecast (ANEF) System analysis.
The pressing issue is why are these operations occurring within spitting distance of residential homes and families?
Australia is a big country. It is scandalous that people being asked to put up with this level of noise pollution when there are so many other uninhabited places for the operations to be run.
The government has responsibility for the health and wellbeing of the Hunter community and effective RAAF operations.
We can have both but not as arrangements presently stand.
Public health should always be the first priority of any government.
With this in mind the Federal government should be actively looking at alternate sites for this weapons testing, to give local residents the peace and quiet they deserve.
