An "Environmental Assessment" of the airport tunnel
Last night, in the ballroom of the Admiral Hotel, staff and consultants of the TPA met with the public to unveil their draft Environmental Assessment (EA) of the pedestrian tunnel to the Island Airport. You can find the "Draft Environmental Screening Report" at this address: http://www.torontoport.com/
About 100 members of the public, virtually all of them from the Bathurst Quay Neighbourhood and the Waterfront, showed up at the meeting to listen and ask questions. They were largely a polite group, unlike other TPA meetings -- perhaps because the TPA has finally accepted that community consultations must be organized as meetings and not "open houses." They peppered the TPA with good questions and occasionally added pointed criticisms or emotional denunciations. This is what we learned.
- The TPA Board will make the final decision on the tunnel sometime in 2011;
- City approval is not necessary because the project will be built on land owned by the TPA;
- The tunnel is estimated to cost $48 million; (Some say this is a low estimate and the costs could more than double.)
- The costs will be paid for by the TPA, and hopefully be reimbursed out of the landing fees paid by passengers;
- Once completed the tunnel will move 870 passengers an hour, about double the number that the ferry can handle;
- The TPA will continue to use the ferry to move passengers and vehicles to the airport;
- The tunnel is being built to service 1.2 million passengers a year and 202 aircraft slots (take-offs and landings) per day;
- The TPA claims this is not an expansion. That level of activity has already been approved by the TPA Board, but Robert Deluce in a meeting reported by the Globe and Mail, claimed that the tunnel was necessary for Porter to expand their service;
- The TPA promised that the trucks used in construction will only travel along Bathurst Street/ Eireann Quay, not Stadium Road; and
- The TPA hope to begin construction in 2011 and the tunnel is estimated to take 14 months to construct.
There was one other major thing that we learned at the meeting. This study is not an Environmental Assessment in the way the public understands it. The EA does not look at the impact of an expanded airport on the community or the surrounding area. All it does is provide a general review of the project. It does not look at the impact of an expanded number of flights on wildlife, noise or air and water pollution.
Perhaps the most interesting point in the meeting came when the consultant explained that the Gardiner Expressway created more noise in the Bathurst Quay neighbourhood than the airport. Why? Because engineers average noise. But that is not why people are disturbed by noise. It is the burst of sound -- the helicopter flying overhead, the motorcycle that roars down a street, or the noise of a Porter aircraft revving its engines at the end of the runway or the dreaded engine run-ups. These are the types of sounds that disturbs people, not the constant murmur of a road like the Gardiner.
This EA is very narrow in scope. Despite the claims by the employees of the TPA, the reason the port authority wants to build a tunnel is to facilitate airport expansion. That expansion will mean more flights per day, more air pollution, more noise and more threat to the wildlife. It is that increase in pollution that should be studied, and the TPA is avoiding that at all costs.
Added to this, the whole approval process of the EA means that the Toronto Port Authority is approving their own project. There is no outside, independent evaluation. The TPA has appointed and paid for the consultants. They have set the terms of reference of the Environmental Assessment and they vote to accept the study and approve the project. This is not an independent evaluation of the risks to the environment and the community in any way.
The whole process is designed to let the port authority approve the tunnel and get on with the construction despite opposition from the community
Bill Freeman
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