SURF BEACH
,
New South Wales
Message
The proposed EUROBODALLA REGIONAL HOSPITAL Transport and Traffic Impact Assessment (exhibit H), posted online by Health Infrastructure NSW, dated 22 May 2023, is incomplete.
It lacks ALL the data require to assess the true Environmental impact of the proposed Hospital.
For example, it lacks any data on total estimated Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused by the proposed Hospital.
In fact, the whole report does not even include the words “greenhouse”, “GHG” or “CO2”.
The posted document has no actual results of research, or calculations, but is just a “check the box” document lightly adapted from countless previous consultant “reports”.
We as a community require the following data:
1. Total daily GHG emissions from ALL sources, especially the private automobile use by doctors, nurses, other staff, patients and visitors.
2. The total daily ADDITIONAL GHG emissions caused by locating the hospital NOT at the centre of population of Eurobodalla Shire (roughly, Broulee) but in a greenfield site on the outskirts of politically powerful Moruya township. This includes
a) additional ambulance kilometres driven each day, on average;
b) additional doctor, nurse and staff kilometres driven each day, on average; and
c) additional patient and visitor kilometres driven each day, on average.
The GHG load from these additional kilometres driven is essential permanent for the lifetime of the hospital, given the slow adoption of EVs in our Shire and the less than average income of families in our Shire.
The data in 2(a) is crucial for an additional reason. Numerous independent studies have shown that the survival rate for patients require ambulance transport to hospital is dependent on three factors: (i) quality and experience of ambulance paramedics; (ii) quality and experience of doctors, nurses and other staff at the receiving hospital; (iii) time before patient pick-up and number of kilometres travelled in the ambulance. We are blessed in Eurobodalla Shire with absolutely top quality ambulance and medical staff, so our ratings in items (i) and (ii) are superb. Hence, to assess the final impact of the proposed hospital, we need the data in (iii).
These calculations need to be performed with the actual centre of population of our Shire, Eurobodalla. This requires access to confidential census data, quite properly not available to the general public.
The report mentions existing bus route 860 (which currently goes nowhere near the proposed hospital), without reporting the crucial fact that it runs very infrequently, often 90 or 120 minutes between services, and often not at weekends, when many visitors would be coming to the hospital to see relatives and friends.
I request that the “Environmental Impact assessment” be rejected, and updated with the necessary data.