Gloucester mothers concerned about the growing incidence of respiratory problems in their area are campaigning to have air-quality monitors, recently introduced in the Upper Hunter, expanded to cover their town.
An arm of the organisation Gloucester Residents in Partnership, the mothers’ group is also lobbying against further mining development in their town.
Wendy Fraser lives on her family’s farm with husband Michael and two-year-old son Andrew.
They run 180 cows on 210 hectares.
While relishing the move to the country, Mrs Fraser is worried about the environment and has lobbied friends
to push for the monitors to be installed.
She said that since Gloucester Coal was granted approval to increase production at its Stratford and Duralie mines, the time was right to act.
‘‘We wanted to take a stand now before things got out of hand and after the monitors were placed in the Upper Hunter, we felt the time was right to act for Gloucester now,’’ Mrs Fraser said.
There was some fear within the community about air quality.
‘‘A lot of it might be unwarranted, but we just don’t know and monitoring could put our minds at rest,’’ Mrs Fraser said.
The group would start raising money to set up independent monitoring of air and water quality if the state government would not extend the network to Gloucester, she said.
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