Contamination risks facing homeowners uncovered

THE recent detection of elevated levels of PFAS chemicals in Sydney’s drinking water catchments has again highlighted the contamination risks Australians face as we deal with the legacy of our industrial and chemical past…

Special Report by Leigh Reinhold

WITH Australia’s long history of mining, agriculture and manufacturing, our wide brown land has been affected by soil, water and air contamination since the arrival of the First Fleet.

From polluting gas works to leaching landfills; toxic industrial plants to unregulated dry cleaners; and leaking petrol stations to cancer-causing PFAS chemicals in our waterways – the impacts of the country’s contamination history run deep.

“We are dealing with a legacy of an industrial past and that past is now often situated on land where the towns and cities are growing,” says risk-mapping expert Howard Waldron, co-founder of spatial intelligence firm Lotsearch.

“It’s marginal land and generally subject to some sort of potential issue or hazard – whether it’s in a flood zone or a potential fire zone or if it’s a contamination hotspot. 

“And, if it’s a contamination hotspot, the contamination isn’t necessarily restricted to a particular site, it could be migrating through the soil or surface and ground water to other sites close by.”

The first prominent cases of soil contamination in Australia came to light in the 1980s when elevated lead levels were found in the bloodstreams of children living near South Australia’s Port Pirie lead smelter. Around the same time, in Queensland and NSW, cattle tick dip sites were of concern due to elevated DDT and arsenic detected in the soil.

In the 90s, industrial sites in cities were earmarked for residential redevelopment and a clearer picture emerged of the extent of countrywide contamination as audits on industrial land identified thousands of contaminated sites. 

Today, around the country, new contamination sites continue to surface. Last month, Water NSW took the precautionary measure of disconnecting Medlow Dam in Sydney’s Blue Mountains from the water supply when PFAS chemicals were found in levels exceeding the Australian guidelines. Further contamination was found in water samples from other nearby sites, not considered to be PFAS hotspots, leading Water NSW to presume the chemicals – which can travel far in creeks and waterways – may have migrated from elsewhere.

As community concerns about these ‘forever chemicals’ grows, the Federal Government has announced a wide-ranging national inquiry into PFAS, chaired by Victorian senator Lidia Thorpe, who describes PFAS as “the asbestos of the 21st century”.

“We’ve already seen worrying instances of cancer clusters with suspected links to PFAS chemicals,” says Thorpe. “We cannot take them seriously enough.”

Most state-based Environmental Protection Authorities, the Victoria Unearthed platform and the Department of Environment in Queensland, now maintain and update land registers and lists of priority sites which are deemed contaminated, or are potentially contaminated and under investigation. 

However, according to Howard Waldron, the lack of historical knowledge of particular lots and the onus on self-reporting of suspected contaminated sites means there are holes in the various systems, which should be of concern for conveyancers and property lawyers when advising their clients.

“What governments know about and publish on registers are still very few sites in comparison to what the actual potential is,” says Waldron.

“Because sites have to go through a rigorous testing and investigation phase, a vast number of sites we have identified have not been tested and therefore remain potential sites of contamination.”

Waldron says in most cases it is also down to the individual landholder to report contamination to the relevant authorities.

“There are duties to notify regulators but some individuals might not realise that obligation and so the whole process leaves gaps. Huge gaps,” says Waldron, whose team at Lotsearch has uncovered 260,000 potentially affected lots across the country. “We try and identify, through historical data, where those contaminating activities have been taking place so that people can then do further investigations if they need to.”

While remediation of affected land can be costly and take considerable time, developing and living on land once it’s cleared of contamination is becoming increasingly common. 

Just ask the 12,000-strong population residing on Sydney’s Rhodes Peninsula – previously the toxic birthplace of the country’s chemical industry and home of Union Carbide – which was successfully remediated in 2011. The NSW EPA continues to monitor the site and residents are advised to use raised garden beds and imported soil if they want to grow vegetables. 

Likewise, expensive harbourside land in Hunter’s Hill on the Old Radium Hill processing plant site was remediated and last month (August) deemed safe for residential redevelopment, 100 years after the initial contamination which included nuclear waste.

“Once a site has been remediated, you can live with any remaining low levels of contamination,” says Waldron, “but it depends on your own feelings and views on whether you are willing to take that risk.”