Australian Capital Territory

State of the Environment 2015

Red-Necked Wallaby – endemic to south-east Australia. This wallaby is very common in the mountains west of Canberra, but is less often seen in the drier, more open woodlands of Canberra Nature Park. This species is not considered to be endangered or threatened. Photo: Leo Berzins
Recommendations
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11.4 Air

11.4.1 Progress against 2011 recommendations

The 2011 State of the Environment Report1 recommended that the ACT Government should:

  • improve knowledge of our indoor air quality; the Chief Health Officer should consider the health impact of indoor air quality in the ACT in the 2014 Chief Health Officer’s Report11
  • improve local air quality outdoors through
    • requiring air quality assessments in all new greenfield developments, to identify and manage air emissions, potentially detrimental to human health and the environment
    • installing and operating a second performance air monitoring station to ensure that the ACT is compliant with National Environment Protection Measure (NEPM) standards
    • determining the feasibility, including costs, of mobile monitoring of appropriate Ambient Air Quality NEPM standards at locations in and around Canberra.

Progress against these recommendations includes:

  • Indoor air quality
    • The Chief Health Officer’s 2014 report did not include indoor air quality monitoring, as this was not considered a health priority at the time.
  • Local air quality
    • A second NEPM-compliant monitoring station was installed in Florey and became operational early in 2014. The ACT is now compliant with the Ambient Air Quality NEPM.
    • Mobile monitoring of local air quality was not supported. It was deemed to be cost-prohibitive and the data collected not likely to be of sufficient quality to support evaluation or policy-making.
    • Although an air quality assessment report was undertaken for the Molonglo Valley development, such assessments are not required for all greenfield developments.

The results of ambient air quality monitoring continue to show that the ACT has good air quality when measured against the national reporting standards and that air quality in the ACT is regularly better than that of other capital cities. Reporting shows that wood smoke from domestic fires, bushfires and controlled burns, and emissions from motor vehicles continue to be the biggest sources of pollution in the ACT, and efforts need to continue to reduce pollution from these sources. Although indoor air quality is not reported on in this report, it is recognised that there are health risks associated with indoor air quality and that monitoring of this may help to avoid or mitigate any resulting health issues.

11.4.2 Justification for the 2015 recommendation

Currently, the policies and practices we have in place are able to maintain the ACT’s air quality at an excellent level. However, the growing population, and urban greenfield developments and intensification may pose a challenge to maintaining this high level of air quality. In particular, increased urban greenfield development may cause increasing pressure on ambient air quality, due to particulate pollution from domestic wood fires. A precautionary approach would be to undertake air quality assessments of wind conditions, inversion qualities and other relevant factors before greenfield development. This would determine whether wood-fired domestic heaters are suitable for the site early in the development process.

Recommendation 4

That the ACT Government requires that the air quality impacts of future urban developments are explicitly considered – in particular, the impact of pollution from domestic wood heaters in greenfield developments.

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