Umberto Galasso was in the lounge room of his North Strathfield home on a rainy day when he heard a loud splitting noise. He looked up to notice a gaping crack in the wall.
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Mr Galasso says cracks either appeared in his walls or started to widen after contractors burrowed beneath his Carrington Street house for the M4 East tunnel section of the WestConnex motorway.
He is among dozens of residents who claim construction vibrations on stage one of the controversial $16.8 billion project have severely cracked the interior and exterior walls of their houses.
"When I first started seeing the cracks I thought it was probably the ground movement," Mr Galasso said.
"I rang WestConnex and they said it wasn't movement from the tunnelling, it was because of the dry weather."
Frustrated after months of construction noise, dust and parking woes caused by construction on the toll-road project metres from their properties, the homeowners want the damage fixed. But they are concerned that their claims for compensation will not be independently assessed and they will be left with no mechanism for redress.
More than 100 residents of Strathfield, Concord and Homebush aired concerns, mostly about damage to their homes, at a community meeting about WestConnex last weekend.
They're scenes that could yet be played out elsewhere in Sydney. The state government has an ambitious toll-road program, the vast bulk of which will be built below ground.
But for the moment the houses on Carrington Street, which is lined with trees and Federation homes and which sit about 40 metres above the WestConnex tunnels, seem to be the hardest hit.
Homeowner Sam Tomeo complained about widening cracks to the front of his house but said the contractor had played down his concerns and insisted workers had complied with their obligations.
"They'll talk about natural surface movement or it being a dry winter," he said.
Mr Tomeo said engineers contracted by the company building the tunnels would carry out dilapidation reports after construction finished early next year – a process he believed was unfair.
"The contractors who do the work are then responsible for deciding whether the damage claims from their work are fair and reasonable, whether they caused it.
"That creates a conflict of interest and it creates a bias against residents. The contractors get to supply their own engineers [for the reports], and their own data, to deny our claims.
"It just doesn't pass the pub test."
Strathfield Labor MP Jodi McKay, who steered last weekend's meeting, said residents didn't have a formal application process for remediation or reparation, or an independent appeal process.
She said the NSW government had set up an independent assessment panel to review condition reports and resolve property damage disputes for a later stage of the project, the M4-M5 link.
"I would say to [WestConnex Minister Stuart Ayres], the process you have in place for the M4-M5, replicate that now for residents affected by the M4 East tunnel," Ms McKay said. "It's an easy fix."
Mr Galasso said the cracks throughout his home made him believe the house was "starting to tilt to one side" and all he wanted was for "what they have broken to be fixed up".
"[We're] living in fear that one day it's going to collapse on us if something isn't done urgently."
His neighbour Pamela Neves also heard the sound of her wall splitting and said multiple cracks had appeared on the walls of the 150-year-old renovated home she shares with her husband and sons.
"It would be different if these weren't people's homes. But these are people's homes, and people's lives and people's families," she said.
The Herald went to Mr Ayres for comment but received a response from a spokesman for Roads and Maritime Services.
“Sydney Motorway Corporation and RMS take all property damage claims very seriously and liaise directly with impacted property owners to assess and resolve any claims that are brought forward.''
He said contractors delivering infrastructure projects were legally obliged to rectify any property damage that resulted from construction activities.
Residents within 50 metres of construction activity were entitled to complimentary property condition surveys before and after construction.
"The M4 East contractor has a formal process for assessing potential damage caused by the project who have inquired about property damage claims."
The spokesman would not be drawn on why the government had not set up an independent assessment panel for earlier stages of the project, or whether it would establish one for the M4 East.
