Health Impact Assessment of Western Sydney Airport Community Engagement

Project Status
Completed

Investigators
Katie Hirono, Fiona Haigh, Karla Jaques, Elizabeth Millen, Cesar Calalang, Stephanie Fletcher-Lartey

Rationale

The Western Sydney Airport (WSA) is a proposed second airport located near Badgery’s Creek, about 50km west of the Sydney central business district. Planning and investigation of a second airport location have been ongoing for the past 50 years and in April 2014, the federal government announced that Badgery’s Creek would be the site of the airport. As part of the EIA and airport development there has been on-going engagement with various communities and relevant stakeholders, such as local councils.

In mid-2015 Population Health, South Western Sydney Local Health District (SWSLHD) convened a working group to consider the impacts of the airport development on local populations. Typically, HIAs of airport developments consider a broad range of impacts such as air quality, noise, jobs, transportation, and visual amenity. However, given that many of these environmental and social determinants were going to be considered within the EIS, time and resource limitations, and the potentially significant impacts of community engagement processes for a project of this scale, it was decided that an HIA be conducted on the community engagement plans for the airport

Aims

  • To identify the potential health impacts of WSA community engagement on communities.
  • To develop recommendations to maximise potential positive impacts and minimise negative impacts.
  • To build HIA capacity within SWSLHD

Design and Method

The standard step-wise process for completing an HIA which involved:

  • Screening;
  • Scoping;
  • Identification;
  • Assessment;
  • Decision making and recommendations; and
  • Monitoring and evaluation

Evidence was collected using:

  • Peer reviewed and gray literature;
  • NSW, regional and city-level data;
  • An online survey; and
  • Community workshops.

Between May and June of 2016, the work team, with assistance from WSCF, conducted five community workshops within various communities that were likely to be impacted by the airport development: Blacktown; Bringelly; Cabramatta; Lawson; Oran Park. Eighty-five people took part in the workshops and included participants from affected communities, local Councils, primary health networks and local health districts.  Over the same months there was also an online survey publically available. This was to enable people who were unable to attend the workshops to contribute. 70 responses to the survey were recieved.

Work on the HIA began in July 2015 and is intended to be completed in February 2017.