Full details of the Consultation Documents may be obtained through this link.
A member of the Newbridge Matters team has sent the following letter to the B&NES Council and, we urge readers to consider the consultation documents and submit their comments.
You will see from the letter that only
one of the many aspects of the consultation has been covered, that of providing
air pollution monitoring equipment on sites not already covered. This applies to the present Park and Ride Car
Park here in Newbridge.
Any comments must be submitted by 31st January 2012 to:
Bath and North East Somerset Council
Environmental Monitoring
Environmental Services
FREEPOST (BA1458)
Bath
BA1 1ZZ
Letter sent by a member of our team referred to above:
Consultation on Changes to the Bath Air
Quality Management Area
7th
January 2012
The vast amount of information you have provided in your Consultation Documents
takes a considerable amount of time to read and comprehend and, so far I have
been unable to complete the task.
However at this stage, may I make just one point which is that from
the information at present available, further air monitoring action must be
taken.
It would seem that the present levels of air pollution at sites not at
present monitored, are either not known at all or, values have been obtained
from ‘modelling’, these being considered insignificant compared with present
day knowledge of the levels of air pollution causing problems with the health
of various sections of the population.
I am sure you would agree, that had we known more about air pollution
at the time the Royal Victoria Park Children’s Play Area was constructed immediately
adjoining the A4 Upper Bristol Road here in Bath, it would not have been sited
in this position. I appreciate the large
cost that would be involved in moving the play equipment to a much more
suitable site, possibly within the park but, surely human life cannot be
measured in terms of money. I request
that very serious thought be given to re-siting this play area, which is used
by many thousands of young children every year, not only from Bath but from
outlying areas, without delay.
May I suggest that monitoring stations be set up at all schools and
their playing fields, hospitals, park and ride car parks and other commercial
locations where large numbers of vehicles congregate within the B&NES area,
so that definite information may be made available on air pollution levels.
It may well be possible to encourage those responsible for these sites
to receive detailed information from the Council on the method of collecting
this pollution information and, for them to forward the samples obtained to
you.
As far as schools are concerned, this method of collecting the
required information could well be included within the normal school
curriculum, making children aware of the dangers of air pollution. This could be done in a similar way to that
which many of them already provide weather information to the National Weather
Bureau but, in this case the samples would be returned to you for analysis.
Such a system would then provide real data on many of these additional
sites at no additional cost to the Council, other than the initial cost of
providing the sampling equipment and instruction on the retrieval of the
samples.
I hope that these initial comments will be taken into consideration
when you assess the results of your consultation period, which ends on 31st
January 2012.
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We hope readers will respond to the Consultation Documents with their
own views on this very important issue.
