“RADIOACTIVE waste will be treated and stored at a Lidcombe depot after western Sydney residents refused to take it.
More than 5000 tonnes of waste from the former Hunters Hill uranium smelter will now be tested by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation before being removed.
Any radioactive waste identified by experts will be taken to the Office of Environment and Heritage’s Lidcombe depot, Premier Barry O’Farrell announced on Monday.
The rest will be shipped to a Kemps Creek facility.
It ends a week of speculation after Finance Minister Greg Pearce agreed there were “no alternative waste sites in NSW” that could handle the material, during budget estimate hearings.
Outraged that radioactive waste seemed destined to be dumped at Kemps Creek’s SITA Environmental Solutions site, residents last week kicked off a campaign to get a 10,000-signature petition to be debated in Parliament.
Mr Pearce said the waste would now be sorted on-site at Hunters Hill before being disposed off.
His office initially refused to divulge the disposal site for security reasons.
Before the election Barry O’Farrell attacked then-Premier Kristina Keneally for threatening to dump the waste in Western Sydney. Opposition leader John Robertson said Mr O’Farrell had “broken his promise”.
“Barry O’Farrell wouldn’t want toxic waste from a radioactive site dumped in his backyard and neither do the residents of Lidcombe,” he said.
WASTEFUL TIMELINE:
* Oct 2010: Penrith City Council opposes the dumping of any radioactive waste at the Kemps Creek landfill.
* Oct 17 2011: Premier Barry O’Farrell announces 5000 tonnes of radioactive waste will probably be shipped from the Hunters Hill site: “When we came into government we received advice that Kemps Creek was the only option.”
* Oct 25 2011: Under questioning, Finance Minister Greg Pearce reveals the state government has exhausted all interstate and overseas alternatives for the waste.
* Oct 28: Opposition leader John Robertson meets with Kemps Creek locals who tell him “Western Sydney is not a dumping ground”.
* Morning of Oct 31: State government declares no radioactive waste will go to Kemps Creek. But refuses to disclose the location.
* Afternoon of Oct 31: Premier Barry O’Farrell tells reporters the waste is bound for a Lidcombe depot.”
Kemps Creek spared radioactive waste, but contaminated soil may be dumped elsewhere in NSW, Henry Budd , The Daily Telegraph October 31, 2011 RADIOACTIVE waste dug up in Hunters Hill will not be dumped at Kemps Creek, the NSW Government announced today, but the opposition says another NSW community could now be the site where material will be dumped.Up to 5000 tonnes of contaminated soil from the site of a former uranium smelter at Hunters Hillwas to have been trucked to Kemps Creek, near Penrith, allowing the sale of three blocks of land in the waterside suburb….
NSW Opposition Leader John Robertson said: ”The Premier is treating the people of NSW with contempt if he thinks it is OK to dump radioactive waste in someone’s backyard and keep it a secret.”The Premier is clearly trying to avoid a second backlash by refusing to tell residents their community is about to become a radioactive dumping ground.”….http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au ... reuzi-1226181281010
Send radioactive waste offshore: NSW Labor 9 News 1 Nov 11 Radioactive waste from the north shore should be sent offshore and not trucked to western Sydney, says NSW Opposition Leader John Robertson. The government on Monday announced that radioactive waste from the former Hunters Hill uranium smelter would be stored at a secret Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH) facility at Lidcombe…..
“What this shows is this is a government that has no plans to deal with this radioactive waste,” he told reporters outside the OEH site in Lidcombe on Tuesday…. ”A premier who said before the election it’s stupid to dump it in western Sydney, yesterday says it’s going to Lidcombe, (and) can’t confirm where in Lidcombe… http://news.ninemsn.com.au/natio ... ld-be-sent-offshore
Radioactive waste haunts residents SMH, October 30, 2011 FOR the state government it has been a lingering headache since the 1970s but for people who lived on top of radioactive waste in an exclusive harbourside suburb of Sydney it is a matter of life and death.
Katie McGrath, who spent her early life at the site of a former uranium smelter at Nelson Parade, Hunters Hill, is pleading for the O’Farrell government to clean up the site once and for all in the interest of public health.
As a three year-old in 1975, Ms McGrath lost her mother, Iris, to a mysterious cancer. Nine months later her father, Fabian, also died from the disease. Both were in their 30s. Ms McGrath is now struggling to cope with the recent diagnosis of another family member with a potentially radiation-related illness.
At least six people who lived in Nelson Parade have died of stomach and other non-hereditary cancers.
”Every state government for four decades has known about this and all of them have sat on their hands while people have died,” Ms McGrath told The Sun-Herald.
Despite decades of dithering and a parliamentary inquiry recommending the site be decontaminated and the radioactive top soil stored safely, the site remains affected. Over the years the government has bought contaminated blocks at 7, 9 and 11 Nelson Parade.
In October last year The Sun-Herald revealed secret plans by the then Labor government to truck 5000 tonnes of toxic soil to a special waste facility at Kemps Creek in Sydney’s west…..
the government now has to find a solution that will not lead to public demonstrations such as the one held by Kemps Creek residents on Friday.
The Finance Minister, Greg Pearce, was forced to admit last week that there was little option other than to move the waste to clay pits at Kemps Creek but Mr O’Farrell has asked for another report from government….
Meanwhile, Ms McGrath said her patience had run out. ”Robyn Parker [the Environment Minister] needs to step up and do something in the interest of public safety, stop all the talk and all the fuss about what the outcry might be if it is moved and get it done. People have lost their families, lost their parents, lost their children for something that has been known about for so long. It was avoidable,” she said.
Despite some bureaucrats attempting to characterise the waste as only mildly more ”radioactive than a banana”, a 1987 report by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation found 37 of 226 samples exceeded 100 becquerels a gram, the level considered hazardous and requiring special disposal. One sample was seven times that level.
Ms McGrath said her parents probably went to their graves unaware that their family home had been built where the uranium smelter had operated between 1911 and 1916. About 500 tonnes of uranium ore were processed at the plant and radioactive tailings mixed into the soil.
Ms McGrath told the parliamentary inquiry in 2008 how her parents would dig in the soil, creating a vegetable garden and retaining walls. Her family has sold the house and she said she felt sorry for residents who were stuck in Nelson Parade, unable to sell because of the risk.
