"Napier truck gridlock residents call for "user pays" for sleep disruption".

4th May 2019.

Press release by Citizens Environmental Advocacy Centre.

Napier Port Board executives want to increase truck freight 187% by 2027 to feed an expanded Port service regionally, and are now offering to sell half the port to private investors.

Napier Port has been publicly owned since the 1800’s by the taxpayers/citizens of HB, and are not being protected by this sale of their own asset now, financially or environmentally.

But the Board Directors need to be aware that if it is sold to private investors, they (the private investors) will become financially responsible for all environmental mitigation including solving the community residential truck noise emissions that cause sleep disruption of Port traffic, due to the RMA and the “user Pays” principal.

So we need to be considered by the Port Board Directors now as to the environmental impacts that will impact upon the community of an almost two hundred percent increase they we seeking of sending truck traffic into their residential zones and what it will have upon our citizens living alongside the roading network to and from the Napier Port.

The truck noise can affect any property within a sphere of 340 m radius of a truck road, engineers have advised.

Many issues have been raised by Napier residents since the year 2000 when Napier City Council well respected Mayor Allan Dick QSM offered the Napier community a “Napier heavy traffic public meeting” at the ‘Century Theatre’ to discuss and find resolutions to solve the problems of truck freight gridlock noise and sleep disruption problems arising then about truck noise and sleep disruption to their lives.

This all truck gridlock problem occurred because since rail was run down by the last National Government under Jim Bolger and was privatised, most freight went onto roads carried by trucks since then.

Now in 2019 the truck traffic has trebled since 2000 in Napier.

Now since the Napier Port board directors want to increase truck traffic again by a whopping 187% by 2027, we need to seriously have a review the ‘health, safety and wellbeing’ of our own citizens living in Napier well before 2027 and make the “user pays” principal comply with their actions now.

HBRC has previously posted their views on heavy truck traffic noise and air pollution issues in Napier in a report in 2003 when the HBRC Environmental Manager admitted then that the roading to the Port was planned in a time when QUOTE “Environmental considerations were less robust then than now, but there was no future in placing the blame but we need to mitigate to limit the effects on those residents”.

So all local councils and ‘Port Board Directors’ must take great care especially HBRC who has been the administrator of Napier Port. so we reasonably must expect them to comply with RMA and other regulatory rules to protect our residential Communities health safety and wellbeing as they are required to do as a ‘regional territorial’ council, and also NCC also needs to step up here also as a local boundary governance Council for it’s citizens because when the Port was built in the 1880’s Napier City council was active in building the roads and rail to the Napier port then.

Independent Environmental monitoring has been carried out.

We as a community have the good fortune of having a local caring Environmental Monitoring Company involved here in a ‘public community project’ as they offered complimentary services of going out to monitor the truck noise levels when residents complain of ‘sleep disturbance’ .

Recently this Environmental Monitoring Company has released under
(Private & confidential) some sobering noise reports of truck noise levels now exceeding the ‘WHO guidelines for community noise’ that will cause ‘sleep disruption’ which is a serious health threat if prolonged, states World Health Organisation. (WHO) in section 3.4 “sleep disturbance” regards this as an ‘Industrial Activity’ which may produce low frequency harmful noise emissions and coupled with section 3.5 “Cardiovascular and Physiological Effects”

https://infrastructure.planninginspectorate.gov.uk/document/2322958

This can affect any property within a sphere of 340 m radius of a truck route in a “free field” environment, similar to that the Marine Parade residents often complained about until NCC forced those trucks to use other roading networks so this issue has reached the point where serious mitigation funding is needed to protect all residents affected by the truck gridlock noise issue in Napier.

The independent Environmental Monitoring company that has produced the sobering report showing WHO ‘Guidelines for community noise’ truck noise have now been seriously exceeded.

We are now requesting meetings with NZTA and other parties again and we may call for another “Napier Heavy Traffic Public Meeting” as it has been a very long 19ys since NCC produced in 2000 Public meeting and they need to replicate this with same care and resolution to those same problems today again.

Interested parties who wish to become involved may send details to this emailclean.air@xtra.co.nz

Ken Crispin.
Secretary.
Citizens Environmental Advocacy Centre.

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