Vales Point affects our health
Why should Peninsula residents be concerned about Vales Point coal-fired power station which is some 50 kilometres north of us?
For their health and that of their children and grandchildren.
The station, owned by Delta Electricity, is the major dangerous emissions operator on the Central Coast.
Too far away to matter? Not at all.
The two coal fired-power stations on the Coast, Eraring and Vales Point, produce 17 per cent of the pollution in Sydney!
The dangers from that pollution in our area are several, including asthma and cancer.
The main agent of danger is nitrogen dioxide, or NO2.
According to the science on NO2, its impact on the Peninsula has been significant, even deadly.
The asthma of at least five per cent of local children has been linked to toxic pollution from Vales Point in particular.
The rates of breast and prostate cancer on the Peninsula to which NO2 has been linked are above the state average.
Vales Point station has twice been granted five-year exemptions from the legal cap on such emissions and has applied for another five-year exemption which will allow NO2 emissions almost double the cap.
The Environment Protection Authority has until the end of the year to decide whether a third exemption should be granted.
Delta has done little to limit its emissions. Eraring has done so.
Yet the major shareholders in Delta have earned hundreds of millions from it.
Delta should not be allowed to endanger the health of the community further.
SOURCE:
Email, 29 Nov 2021
Gill Boehringer, Woy Woy