The Australian Institute of Sport would be forced from Canberra if the extension to the Gungahlin freeway goes ahead, according to the institute’s governing body.
Mark Peters, the chief executive of the Australian Sports Commission, which administers the AIS, warned yesterday that national and international sports bodies would not come to the Canberra site because of pollutants from the freeway.
Until recently, the commission accepted the eastern route for the freeway as the lesser of two evils, but a new study has revealed that the eastern route has potentially as many air-pollution problems as the western route.
Mr Peters said being forced from Canberra was something the AIS had no control over. The various sporting bodies would simply not come to train in Canberra or do team-building or sports-medicine here if the site were compromised by road pollution. Many athletes competed in polluted venues, but they sought the very best training environments which Canberra at present offered. If the sports bodies decided not to come here because other sites offered a better training environment the AIS would have to move. Adelaide and the Gold Coast would happily host the AIS, he said.
The Federal Government had $65 million on the table for an upgrade of AIS facilities in Canberra. That was now in jeopardy.
Federal Opposition Sports spokeswoman Kate Lundy accused the commission yesterday of political blackmail.
“”The ACT Government continues to demonstrate their goodwill by offering to accommodate all of the AIS’s concerns,” she said.
The former ACT Liberal Government adopted the eastern route. Labor promised the western route. On election Labor confirmed it would go ahead with the western route. In February, ACT Transport Minister Simon Corbell visited the AIS and accepted that there was a question of pollution for athletes and agreed there would be a joint study. The terms of that study and its reporting time are being worked out.
Two weeks ago Mr Corbell announced the ACT would go ahead with an initial stage of the Gungahlin Drive extension. It would intiall;y be two lanes – not four – and be sunk to between five and seven metres below ground level to accommodate the AIS. But the AIS said it was not convinced that it would solve the problem.
A spokeswoman for Mr Corbell said yesterday, that Mr Corbell was confident the design would address all the AIS’s concerns. The commission and the ACT Government should await the results of the joint study.
In the meantime, the commission launched its own scientific study to test the work done by its own expert Professor Peter Fricker who pointed out that the noise pollution of the western route would disturb the sleep patterns of elite athletes and that particle and ozone pollution would affect their performance. Mr Peters said winning was a matter of fractions of a second or a centimetre, so the pollution issue was critical.
The commission’s study by Eldamar Research Associates – a group of transport, sport psychologists and physiologists and pollution experts — came to a surprising conclusion on the eastern route as well. “”The likelihood of a negative impact on local air quality from the eastern option would possible be at least equal to that of the western option,” it said.
Prevailing westerly winds would trap pollutants before blowing them up the western side of O’Connor ridge and back to the AIS in a vortex.
This condemnation of the eastern route now puts the AIS as being opposed to both Gungahlin Drive options and on collision with the Act Government which says a road must be built.