KEY POINTS:
Transit NZ reports strong public support for its $1.9 billion motorway tunnels project through Waterview in Auckland, but acknowledges more work is needed to allay air-quality concerns.
It said yesterday it had received 768 submissions, of which 75 per cent supported the project, 17 per cent opposed it, and 8 per cent were neutral.
Principal project manager Clive Fuhr said the tunnels proposal was developed in response to community calls for as much as possible of a 4.5km motorway link from Mt Roskill to the Northwestern Motorway at Waterview to run underground.
But he added that, although Transit was pleased with the overall support, "that's not to say there aren't still issues to be worked through".
Community concern about air quality near the tunnel portals was one of two main reasons given for opposing the project, the other being its projected cost of $1.89 billion in 2015 escalated dollars.
"We will be doing more technical investigations and will work closely with the community," Mr Fuhr said.
Waterview Primary School principal Brett Skeen said a proposal to build one of two venting stacks for tunnel fumes just across a street from his school and its contributing kindergarten was "of huge community concern".
A submission from his board of trustees describes the vents as "the invisible, silent killer of your tunnel proposal that will maim our children, their families and our staff."
It accuses Transit of misleading the community by failing to make clear that the fumes from the vents would be unfiltered, unlike tunnels in Europe and Japan, and says the need to reduce emissions of tiny particles to battle respiratory diseases was why all schools including Waterview were "rightly" made to stop incinerating rubbish.
"You are proposing to install another, more deadly, chimney beside our school, and it is ethically wrong," the submission says.
Mr Fuhr said tests by health officials of unfiltered vents from tunnels in New South Wales had found "no measurable effects at surface level" and that expert advice to Transit was that fumes from its project would be "quickly diluted in the atmosphere".
But he said the agency was nevertheless conducting a range of air-quality tests, taking account of wind patterns and land elevations around Waterview, to assure the community that people's health would not be jeopardised.
He said tests would have to be completed before Transit could determine its height, and noted that the agency's board had yet to confirm the tunnels proposal as the desired option for linking State Highway 20 with the Northwestern Motorway.
Transit's board is to meet in open session in Auckland early next month to consider a full report on the project.
A Government-appointed steering group involved in a parallel consideration of whether the project should be built as a public-private partnership will meet some submitters in a separate consultation exercise next week.
Although construction of the project will not begin before mid-2010 for completion in 2015, contractors have told Transit they may be able to finish the associated 4km motorway extension through Mt Roskill to New Windsor by the end of this year.
About 97 per cent of earthworks have been completed on the $189 million project, and tarmac has been laid over much of its western sector, where the motorway will end at a roundabout already fully-formed and landscaped at its intersection with an extended Sandringham Rd.
But Transit hopes the roundabout will be a temporary feature only, to make way for a full motorway interchange once the Waterview link is completed to the Northwestern Motorway.
