City accused of misleading public on central bus station pollution

"People think the air quality is being monitored, but it is not," says a Green group spokeswoman.

By MIRIAM BULWAR DAVID-HAY (TRANSLATED)
Tel Aviv bus station 88 248 (photo credit: Courtesy )
Tel Aviv bus station 88 248
(photo credit: Courtesy )
The Society for the Protection of Nature in Tel Aviv is accusing the city of misleading the public and the Knesset into thinking that air quality in the central bus station - considered the most polluted site in Gush Dan - is being monitored when in fact it is not, reports www.mynet.co.il. And it says the city promised months ago to publicize findings from the pollution monitoring facility installed at the station but has so far failed to do so. According to the report, a pollution monitoring facility was installed at the bus station earlier this year, and in August, the city promised that come October it would publicize its findings. "The findings of the pollution monitoring station at the new central bus station are currently undergoing scrutiny and correction," the city announced in August. "When the scrutiny is concluded, during the course of the month of October, it will be possible to present the first report that will be distributed to all relevant parties." But last week the city said it did not yet have the figures, saying the pollution monitor was "still running." A municipal spokesman said installation of all the necessary machinery for the monitor had been completed less than two months ago, and the monitor now needed to run "for several months in order to learn and process all the figures." The spokesman said that once the figures "stabilized" they would be publicized. But a spokeswoman for the Society for the Protection of Nature in Tel Aviv said the society had not been told the monitor was still running, and criticized the city over its "lack of transparency" on this issue. "The new information was not passed on to the Knesset's Interior Committee when it visited the central bus station," the spokeswoman said. "There is a misleading here of the Knesset and a misleading of the public. People think the air quality is being monitored, but it is not."