ORICA is scaring local residents with a plan to soon start digging up and burning carcinogenic waste and heavy metals currently buried under a car park on its Banksmeadow site.
Greens Candidate for Kingsford Smith Lindsay Shurey has called for an halt “…until community questions have been answered.”
She says that members of the community do not accept that a consultation process conducted by ORICA resulted in the best disposal technique being chosen.
She said,
“The Greens have been contacted this week by residents who don’t believe that they were taken seriously in a community consultation process conducted by ORICA to decide on the safest disposal technique.”
The ORICA plan involves excavating about 70 tonnes of contaminated soil buried under a car park and heating it to break down dangerous chemicals into less harmful components.
Ms Shurey stated that residents had told her this week that the burn off process could not meet government safety limits on mecury emmissions and that ORICA had to be given a special exemption from the limit.
Ms Shurey
“Local residents living around the site are genuinely frightened. I think that the plan should be put on hold until the Government can answer some key questions”
The Greens want the following questions answered:
1) Has ORICA simply chosen the cheapest and not the safest disposal technique? and
2) Why was ORCIA granted an exemption from the accepted limit on mecury emissions in the first place?”
Ms Shurey said,
“Orica has been given an exemption from the mercury emissions limit of 0.2 milligrams per cubic metre. But that doesn't mean the limit does not exist and it is of concern that it will be breached, albeit with State Government approval.”
Residents point to government assessments of the proposal that raise concern.
“The AQIA identified uncertainty regarding compliance with the stack concentrations and the DECCW criteria for ground level concentrations of mercury (being the Protection of the Environment Operations (Clean Air) Regulation 2002 (CAR)). The uncertainties relate to the amount of mercury that would be removed during processing, the extent to which mercury would be captured in the emission control systems, and the form the mercury would take in the treatment process (i.e. inorganic or organic). (NSW Government Planning report, “Major Project Assessment: Car Park Remediation Project Orica, Botany Industrial Park” November 2009 page 25.)
In summary, modelling could not confirm whether the DECCW criteria for mercury emissions (0.2mg/m3) could be achieved from the DTD stack, however mercury discharged via the emissions control systems on the ESB and FSB would meet the criteria. The predicted worst-case DTD stack emissions during normal operations are 1.16mg/m3 which are considerably greater than the CAR limit of 0.2mg/m3.”
(NSW Government Planning report, “Major Project Assessment: Car Park Remediation Project Orica, Botany Industrial Park” November 2009 page 25)