THE NSW Government must put a much greater cost on air pollution to force the heaviest polluters – coal mining and coal-fired power generators – to “clean up their act”, says Doctors for the Environment.
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In two submissions to government air quality reviews and a proposed NSW Clean Air Plan, the group has argued strongly for a shift from the community and taxpayer paying the price for air pollution, to the industries generating it.
Coal mining had to be included in a proposed expansion of the existing load-based licensing scheme, because reducing pollution “in an equitable way is undermined if substantial polluters are not covered by the scheme”, Doctors for the Environment said.
Coal mining was “the most glaring example” of a sector being exempted from paying the price for PM2.5 air pollution, despite being the state’s biggest emitter.
“Omitting the mining industry from load-based licensing coverage unfairly leaves other industries paying for pollution while mining gets away free,” said Doctors for the Environment spokesman and Hunter Dr Ben Ewald.
Lake Macquarie and Lithgow had no public air quality monitoring and were in danger of heart disease, chronic lung disease and asthma from pollution emitted by power stations.
“Installing air quality monitors in these locations is vital to understanding the health risks to these communities,” Dr Ewald said.
Air pollution in Australia is estimated to kill 3000 people per year, more than the national road toll.
“The current mechanism for polluters to pay for their air pollution is too low to encourage them to clean up their act. If all the health costs from coal-fired power generation were added up and included in the price, polluters would pay 49 times the current price,” Dr Ewald said.
“Major polluters such as coal-fired power generators currently pay very little, and they are passing on the health costs to the community.”
In November the NSW Environment Protection Authority released a report proposing expanding the load-based licensing scheme to include mining and PM2.5 fine particle pollution for the first time, after Commonwealth and state environment ministers set a PM2.5 standard in December, 2015.
Predictive modelling for the EPA showed the new PM2.5 standard was “unlikely to be attained in Singleton and Muswellbrook into the future as coal production in the Hunter Valley is expected to continue to increase”.
It showed all man-made particulate emissions, including from wood-burning domestic heaters, needed to be reduced by 50 per cent to meet the new standard.
