REVIEW ARTICLE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT: WHY REFORM IS NEEDED

NOTES AND REFERENCES

• Guidelines for Economic Appraisal., NSW Treasury Technical Paper. Revised Edition. January. 1990 The NSW Treasury endorsement involved the inclusion in its guidelines of a cost-benefit analysis for the Gore Hill freeway. It was carried out by the consultant Travers Morgan Pty Ltd (November 1986. Ref. 878) for the DMR (now the RTA).
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• Commissioners of Inquiry for Environment and Planning (William Simpson, Chairman.), Proposed Heliport for the Central Business District of Sydney at Pier 8, Pyrmont. July. 1993
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• NSW Parliamentary Debates (Hansard) Sydney Heliport Bill, 3 March 1994., p. 169
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• Land and Environment Court of NSW, Record of Hearing: Inshaw v The Council of Hornsby and another. No. 10640 of 1993., 1994. Coram: Bannon, J. Economic analysis of the Galston helipad referred to in the text, was carried out on behalf of the plaintiff by comparing it with another nearby public helipad. A highly conservative value of benefit-to-cost ratio of less than 0.5 was estimated based on the minimum disamenity costs to the residents (conveyancing costs for relocation) while their house values were considered as unaltered.
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• Standards Australia, Australian Standard AS 2363. Acoustics - Assessment of Noise from Helicopter Landing Sites., 1990. The anomaly referred to was revealed by analysis of the helicopter noise measurements carried out on behalf of the defendant.
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• ‘Land Court Faces Uncertain Future.’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 20 February, 1991. Statements attributed to the Honourable N. F. Greiner.
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• J. B. Ollerhead, Past and Present UK Research on Aircraft Noise Effects. Proceedings of Noise-Con 93. 1993 National Conference on Noise Control Engineering., 1993. In terms of annoyance Ollerhead showed that a fleet of helicopters was generally perceived to be noisier by about 10 dB than a fleet of fixed wing aircraft where the actual measured noise levels were the same. The author of the paper referred to is Head of Environmental Noise and Analysis, UK Civil Aviation Authority. His finding was arbitrarily reduced to 0.5 dB in the Commissioner's report, which had the effect of allowing a much larger fleet of helicopters to fly to ensure commercial viability. This summary disposal of evidence unhelpful to a proponent, and the lack of a cost-benefit analysis is consistent with the predetermination of the project.
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• P. Cullen, ‘Quality Assurance in Environmental Research.’, 64th ANZAAS Congress, Newcastle. Science for Environmental Decision Making. September 24–27, 1995
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• J. L. Goldberg, ‘Supersonic Transports - Some Environmental and Economic Aspects of Their Operation.’, Search 6, 4, April 1975. This paper revealed the cover up of Concorde noise levels in the Anglo-French submission to the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO).
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• J. L. Goldberg, ‘Environmental Impact and the Importance of a Freedom of Information Act.’, Environmental Engineering Conference, The Institution of Engineers, Australia. Sydney 12–14 July 1978. This paper was written to demonstrate the international interaction of political, technical and legal factors in environmental decision making. It contains references to key documents including Hansard (Commons and Lords), US Congressional Record (94 th Congress) and the record of the US Court of Appeals for the second circuit (1977) in the case of British Airways Board and Compagnie Nationale Air France v The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, an action initiated to obtain landing rights in New York. The campaign against Concorde involved groups and individuals in the United Kingdom, USA, Sweden and Australia, who collaborated with each other over a long period by exchange of information which discredited Anglo-French claims of environmental acceptability and economic performance. An outstanding overall contribution to all aspects of environmental concern, such as sonic boom, airport noise, cosmic radiation risk at high altitude as well as aviation safety, was made by Dr Bo Lundberg, former Director-General of the Aeronautical Institute of Sweden (Search, Vol.4 No.9, September 1973). Mr Richard Wiggs, Secretary of the UK Anti-Concorde Project, a coalition of environmentalists in the UK which included academics such as the Cavendish Professor of Physics at Cambridge, Sir Neville Mott, proved to be a highly effective organisation for gathering, interpreting and distributing information. As noted by Kenneth Owens (New Scientist, 14 October 1982), the earlier United States SST project did not survive “when fully exposed to hard economic and scientific analysis and later to general public opinion”. Owens considered its defeat in Congress during March 1971 as “the environmentalists’ most dramatic victory…….the decision sent out powerful and enduring Shockwaves”.
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• Commissioners of Inquiry for Environment and Planning (John Woodward Chairman), A Proposed Expressway from Pennant Hills Road, Beecroft to Pittwater Road, Ryde Known as the F2 Stage 1. July, 1990. This report rejected the proposal on environmental, economic and social grounds. The Inquiry lasted eight months, received 829 submissions from 301 parties of which 52 were expert witnesses from a wide range of disciplines. It concluded specifically that there would be no peak period congestion relief in the network, nor was the road justified as an essential link to the North West sector based on demographic projections of population growth in the sector and employment growth on the North Shore. The then Transport Minister Baird attacked the findings and was quoted as saying that the Commission had consulted only “small group of people” opposed to the road, and that three out of four residents supported its construction (The Sydney Morning Herald, 21 August, 1990). The latter claim was based on the rigged opinion poll described in the main text. In the Western Sydney Business Review, 15 October 1990, the former NSW Premier Greiner was reported as saying that the Commissioners’ Report was “….just totally one-sided and not an intellectually rigorous approach”.
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• J. L. Goldberg, ‘The F2 Castlereagh Expressway Affair-A Case for Reform of the NSW Roads and Traffic Authority.’ Urban Policy and Research., 11,3, September. 1993. The particular document referred is cited in this paper. It was a memorandum from the RTA Sydney Region Director, R. F. Morris to the then Minister for Roads, Wal Murray.
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• The survey referred to in the text was entitled “Attitudes to the Castlereagh Freeway”. It was commissioned by the RTA. In addition to built-in bias, the survey design did not conform to the requirement that the respondents had to be competent to respond. See for example, E. R. Babbie, The Practice of Social Research (Wadsworth, CA.) pages 151–153.
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• J. Tyme, Motorways versus Democracy, MacMillan, 1978. Chapter 6 of this book discusses the corruption of government in the UK in connection with road and motorway proposals.
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• NSW Roads and Traffic Authority, Northwest Transport Link. Environment Impact Assessment Report., 1993. At page 211, it is explicitly stated that “Not only will the expressway reduce future congestion, but it will reduce existing congestion”. Moreover, detailed analysis of present and future traffic flows in the region during the morning two hour AM peak period, reveals insignificant changes in travel speed in the network with the M2 inserted, compared to that obtained from a minimum upgrade of the existing network. This result is largely independent of the type of road linked to the M2, and is not consistent with claims of congestion relief. See Denis Johnston and Associates (1991) Transport and Traffic Analysis. Appendix F. This key volume was issued separately as a working paper for the EIS.
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• A.L. Brown, and S. Rutherford, Criteria for the Control of Night-time Road Traffic Noise: Directions from the Current Research Literature., Proceedings of WESTPRAC IV91, Brisbane, 26–28 November. 1991
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• NSW Parliamentary Debates (Hansard) Traffic Noise, page 26. Roads and Traffic Authority-Traffic Noise, pp. 48–49. 13 November 1995. M2 Motorway Noise Barrier, p. 68, 16 November 1995.
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• Report of the Senate Select Committee on Aircraft Noise in Sydney, Falling on Deaf Ears?, 1995. A particular example of unethical conduct engaged in by EIS consultants when compromised by a predetermined outcome is described and analysed in detail in a collection of documents which has been presented to the NSW Mitchell Library (call no. Q363.742 0994/2). It includes affidavits filed in the Federal Court in the case of Councils v FAC and Ors, which was supposed to be heard in 1992, but the case did not proceed.
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• K. E. Bullen, ‘Should Scientists Disagree?’, The Sydney Morning Herald. 24 May 1973. Bullen was writing in response to a letter published in the Herald on 18 May by Ann Moyal who raised the issue of divided scientific opinion and inconclusive evidence.
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