On The Campaign Trail

Come and join me for these community meetings and street stalls for discussion of the issues that affect you.
The electorate of Derrimut is faced with a number of very important local issues incuding the proposed Barro tip, Westlink, inadequate public transport, poor access to community health and dental services, as well ending up with new high voltage powerlines through Ardeer as yet again the west of melbourne is taken for granted.

Thu 29th July 2010 11a-12p
Street Stall
Main Rd East
St Albans
4th August 2010 7pm - with Colleen Hartland
Transport Meeting
Errington Community Centre
St Albans
5th August 2010 11a-12p
Street Stall
Glengala Rd
West Sunshine
7th August 2010 10-12pm - with Colleen Hartland
Street Stall
Cnr Station Rd and Ballarat Rds
Deer Park

Powerlines Update
The Ardeer West Sunshine Powerline Action Group was formed last night to organise its response to the controversial erection of power poles in Ardeer without community consultation. you can link to recent media here.

The group is planning:

• A written response to the environmental impact assessment.
• Letter writing workshop for residents with limited english.
• A Protest rally.
• Meeting with Powercor and council.
• Discussion with ETU for support for community picket. The ETU has already expressed in principle support for our campaign..click here to link to the ETU.
  

While powercor contines to tell our community that these lines are safe, and within the ICNIRP guidelines designed to ensure an extremely low level of exposure, this is a myth. Our research shows that all overhead 66kV lines emit EMF's in a range of .5-40uT (Powercors own modelling says the level would be .7uT at 10m).

While Australia subscribes to these 1998 safety guidelines, the guidelines ignore the more recent pooled analysis of 20 epidemiological studies by the World Health Organisation task group (2002) which found an association between prolonged exposure to electromagnetic fields above .3-.4 uT and childhood leukaemia. There are children living on Ridgeway pde, Whitesides ave and Nancy streets, children attending the kindergarten and being cared for by grandparents in the area, who will be exposed to this electromagnetic field for many hours a day.

Letter sent to local papers


Residents tabled a petition to council at their recent meeting which requests that Powercor place underground the proposed 66kV powerlines through Ardeer.

We hope that council will continue to represent the interests of residents by raising their legitimate concerns and cancelling the permit for these works as Powercor have failed to comply with conditions of the permit which required them to consult with our community.

In our view, consultation means discussing Powercor’s aims with our community and being willing to hear our concerns and to negotiate. Consultation does not mean sending a pattern letter to residents saying what Powercor intends to do after the poles have been erected or seeking retrospective approval for the removal of trees.

To date Powercor continue to say they will not pay for the line to be placed underground despite the fact that the Powercor/CitiPower entity, returned a $AU69.5 million profit last year and their parent company Spark Infrastructure reporting an increase in total underlying income of 14.5% to $266.0 million.

Powercor has not supplied any evidence that there will not be adverse health effects as a result of EMF from the 66Kv lines. They have tried to tell us that the exposure of up to 100uT is safe according to 1998 guidelines while more recent (2007) World Health Organisation analysis acknowledges that prolonged EMF (electromagnetic field) exposures above .4uT (microtesla) are associated with childhood leukaemia. The impact study paid for by Pwercor uses computer modelling to predict the EMF from these lines and estimates a figure of .6-.7uT at 10m, however, UK literature on EMF’s under a 66kV line say the EMF varies from .5-40uT. This is especially important given the proximity of the Ridgeway Parade kindergarten, only 10m from the base of these poles.

Powercor continues to try to tell us that this line will improve the reliability of electricity supply to residents in the area. This line is not supplying power to Ardeer residents, it is supplying power to the industrial estate on the other side of the ring road, where ironically the lines will then go underground.

It seems that while we remain a safe Labor seat our community will continue to be taken for granted. Given the Liberals track record of privatisation, defunding of services in the west and antiworker legislation I don’t believe they are the solution either. It is time we demand better for our area and that includes electing genuine, local representatives with a track record.

Powerlines meeting success

Last night the Ardeer Community met to demand yet again that the 66kV powerlines being put through Ardeer be placed underground.

80 residents attended a very productive meeting at which we formed a community committee to organise the next steps including: a response to the EIA, protest action, letter writing workshop and getting information out to our community in community languages.


all present passed a resolution to demand the undergrounding of the power lines.


I have also spoken directly to Howard Worthing at the ETU who has said the ETU will back the action group on this issue and will consider a number of specific things we have asked them to do.