Editorial: It’s time to start taking asbestos seriously

Editorial: It’s time to start taking asbestos seriously

Residents of Randwick and Maroubra could have been exposed to asbestos and a slew of deadly chemicals for decades. What’s more, they could be walking past giant piles of the stuff every day, but no one will tell them anything about it.
I grew up in Maroubra, but my back gate was on the border of Randwick and led directly and unimpeded on to a 13.1 hectare Department of Defence-owned wetland, now known as Randwick Environmental Park (REP).
The kids of the neighbourhood knew of two treehouses in the wetlands and shared the use of a raft to traverse the water. We used to dress up in cargo shorts, equip ourselves with toy radios, and dig trenches – an inadvertent tribute to the site’s 100 year military history.
That same military history was responsible for the construction of a gas testing facility and dozens of asbestos-clad Navy supply store sheds during the Second World War. The gradual destruction of these sheds since the 70’s littered asbestos through the very soil we dug our trenches into – palm sized off-white fragments that we used to fling at each other along with rocks and the seeds of one unusual plant.
Local resident and active Moverly committee member, Jocelyn McGirr told me about the early destruction of the sheds.
“They just smashed them. They had people without any form of protection, no masks or anything and they used to have them caving in the roofs. It was hair raising,” she said.
These early demolitions started taking place in the 1970’s when it was only just becoming apparent how dangerous asbestos could be to workers.
But Jocelyn said the destruction of the last naval store in the 2000’s still showed a disregard for the risks to residents.
“It got to the point where there was only one shed left and it had an asbestos ceiling. We [the committee] were to help decide how this could be safely dealt with. But then we arrived one evening to see that they’d taken the roof off and the ceiling was flapping in the breeze,” she said.
In 1996 it was deemed that the land was “surplus to defence needs” and the wheels were set in motion to have the former site of these sheds sold off to developers. Only now the soil became an issue.
The Department of defence needed to have the land rezoned from Crown Special Use to medium density housing, but Randwick council blocked the attempt. The council had the NSW State Government endorse an amendment to its Local Environmental Plan to state that a master plan be prepared for the site.
The masterplan that council and Defence finally settled on in November 2001 listed the decontamination and remediation of the site as one of Defence’s roles.
This work was not carried out until 2007. When it was, Defence used an “experimental method” of removing the contaminants and it appears some of them have since remained in massive piles and have been allowed to grow over in the south western corner of the development land.
This was certainly the case in the northern area of the REP where Defence documents read:
“Several stockpiles of contaminated soil lie within the proposed site and these will require removal from the immediate site.”
Neither Defence nor Randwick council commented on the makeup of the piles that currently sit no less than 10m from a regularly used road, though separated by a barbed wire fence. This corner was the location of the gas testing facility and no building report has been provided regarding the makeup of the buildings that stood there.
The logic for the piles in the North was that once the hills are grown over, the contaminants are held in place and pose no risk. But grass doesn’t grow overnight. A windy day has created countless dust storms in the wetland and surrounding areas. It only takes one asbestos fibre on the lungs to develop into mesothelioma later in life.
Council claims that because the remediation was undertaken by Defence that they could not comment on the piles. Surely they have a responsibility to know – a responsibility to their residents.
All parties involved insist that the site is ready and safe for development. The Defence will soon finish a maintenance depot in the west and private developers are currently constructing a set of townhouses in the east. The developer site never had high levels of contamination, but when residents walk their dogs past a several four metre tall mounds of unidentified material every day and given the whole site’s past, it is easy to understand why there is still queasiness about this area.
This is a site currently surrounded by children and families. When the developments are complete, it will be occupied by them.
I find it hard to believe that a century of contamination hasn’t affected the water table that feeds the wetlands. But I find it shocking that Randwick council’s final plan of management for the site lists the quality as ‘unknown’. The wetland is ephemeral; the waters rise and fall through the soil. How are they not re-contaminating the top soil every time they do this?
This site is the size of a small suburb and will soon have the population to boot. After almost a decade of dead-ends for residents, it’s time that council and Defence stopped playing volleyball with the welfare of Randwick and Maroubra.

 

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