Badgerys Creek is no solution
By Mike Karadjis
Residents of Sydney's inner south-west are rightly angry about the horrendous levels of noise and air pollution, affecting hundreds of thousands of residents, which have accompanied the opening of the third runway at Kingsford Smith Airport. The decision making process around the third runway was fundamentally flawed, the development going ahead with total disregard for clearly expressed resident opposition since the 1980s.
The large public protest actions currently being organised are crucial to forcing the Keating government to reverse its outrageous decision on the runway and should be supported by everyone who cares about democracy and everyone's right to a clean, healthy living environment.
One worrying aspect of the anti-third runway campaign, however, has been the response by ALP politicians at the local, state and federal level, along with some community activists, that the solution is to fast-track the proposed airport at Badgerys Creek in Sydney's western suburbs. There are a lot of reasons why Badgerys is not a good solution.
First, the area west of Fairfield which backs onto Badgerys Creek is Sydney's fastest-growing residential development. It makes no sense to transfer problems already being experienced in the inner city out to the western suburbs, where they will adversely affect even more people. To compound the problem, it is likely that, should the Badgerys development go ahead, there will be no noise curfew there — planes will fly in and out 24 hours a day.
Badgerys Creek is the site of the Prospect dam and its surrounding catchment area. This dam supplies one-third of Sydney's water supply. The main pipeline from the Warragamba Dam also passes through this area. In addition to the increased pollution of the water from plane emissions, there is the risk of plane crashes into the dam causing pollution, flooding and a failure of the city's water supply. In the event of an emergency, there is no sea nearby for fuel dumping — dumping will have to happen either into the dam or onto residential areas.
Fast-tracking the Badgerys proposal will also mean that, in the context of present governments' cutbacks in public transport, that pressure can be turned up by government to allow the building of more freeways as the means of transport to the airport. Specifically, we would likely see the destruction of Wolli Creek, the last remaining bushland in Sydney.
The other important issue here is that Badgerys is no solution to the problem of having an airport in the heart of the city. There is no suggestion that Badgerys would take international flights, or that its development would result in the closure of Kingsford Smith, so the problems already being experienced by the inner west residents would continue regardless.
The current situation has raised yet again the whole question of who decides and in whose interests. It is not in our interests that the third runway has been built, nor in our interests that the problem be transported further west. We must force the government to find alternatives which put people's health and welfare before profits for the airlines and tourism corporations. The anti-third runway campaign needs to seriously take up this challenge if we are not going to be lumbered with yet another urban development disaster in Sydney's west.
[Mike Karadjis is the Democratic Socialist candidate for Fairfield in the March 25 NSW election.]