Hours before Premier Chris Minns announced a new taskforce to investigate asbestos contamination in garden mulch, the Illawarra joined Sydney with some new asbestos problems of its own.
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Port Kembla resource recovery company South Coast Equipment (SCE) is having action taken against it by the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) after testing revealed asbestos in a stockpile at its Shellharbour Rd base.
SCE has now been given a "prevention notice" by the Environment Protection Authority ordering it to not deal with any more asbestos waste, and to batch test all similar materials for the potentially deadly contaminant.
The contamination was revealed after EPA testing revealed asbestos in stockpiles of "fines" recovered from waste material for re-use.
A week after these results, SCE told the EPA another 600-700 tonnes of "recovered fines material" had been added to the same stockpile.
SCE is in the business of resource recovery material supply.
It takes construction waste in the form of excavated soil, builders waste, bricks and roof tiles, asphalt - and processing it for reuse as road base, recycled sand, under-slab fill and aggregate.
Of the ten samples taken by the EPA, one was identified as containing asbestos.
The Mercury has asked SCE how its own testing did not reveal the presence of asbestos, and whether any of the material left the site before the prevention notice was issued this week.
The testing was performed last November, the results were communicated by the EPA to SCE on December 14, and the prevention order was issued on Wednesday, February 13.
The prevention notice orders SCE not to store asbestos material at the site, as the EPA "reasonably suspects" has been occurring.
The EPA has been given additional staff from NSW government agencies to work on the growing asbestos problem in Sydney, as Mr Minns admits there could be "hundreds" of public sites that have received and used asbestos-contaminated garden mulch.
While the EPA prevention notice mentions only a stockpile of "fines", it is unlikely to be a similar kind of material has has caused problems in Sydney parks and other public facilities.
EPA head Tony Chappel said there were now 100 people working on the issue.
Ben Langford
Senior journalist writing on the environment. Opinion columnist, independent. We rely on your news tips so please, don't be shy to let us know what's going on.
Senior journalist writing on the environment. Opinion columnist, independent. We rely on your news tips so please, don't be shy to let us know what's going on.
