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Case Study - Demolition
in a Residential Area
The Lead Plant in the Inner West of Sydney.
by Elizabeth O’Brien, Coordinator
NSW Community Lead Advisory Service
The LEAD Group is a community group which was founded in 1991 by three
families concerned about lead emissions from a lead and aluminium manufacturing plant in
inner western Sydney. Soil in a residential property owned by the plant and adjacent to
the plant was found to have 16,600 parts per million lead, or more than 50 times more than
the "investigation level". The "investigation level" is the only
action level in NSW - it means that the result is above 300 parts per million lead and the
sources of lead should be investigated. A blood lead survey of fifty 1-4 year old children
in the area found that 50% of them had a blood lead level above what is now called the
national goal (10 micrograms per decilitre).
Six years later, The LEAD Group Inc runs the NSW Community Lead
Advisory Service (CLAS) from an office in Summer Hill, and the owners of the lead
manufacturing plant have moved to an industrial park. So after 116 years of operation, all
the plant and equipment has been shifted and the buildings are currently being demolished.
In early 1996 residents of the 3 streets which form the boundary of the
plant site founded the Summer Hill Local Environment Group (SHLEG) when the proposal to
build town houses on the site was put before council. Elizabeth O’Brien from The LEAD
Group spoke to the residents’ group and many submissions were made to Ashfield
Council to ensure, among other things, that the demolition and site remediation would be
done in a way which did not contaminate nearby properties and stormwater with the
asbestos, lead and other contaminants known to be on the site. The conditions to be placed
on the works were negotiated between the consultants hired by the developer to manage the
work, the company lawyers, the council and the residents, over several meetings. The LEAD
Group proposed the conditions:
- that the lead contaminated dust and paint off any building debris be recycled for its
lead content at a secondary lead smelter, and;
- that the contaminated soil be cleaned by a machine currently cleaning heavy metals out
of soil at the ICI Dulux site in Cabarita, Sydney, in order to reduce by 80% the amount of
contaminated soil requiring disposal at a toxic waste dump.
The general response amongst the vociferous Councillors at the meeting
was that cradle to grave management such as this was a laughable matter, and they were
doing well to have considered the community’s concerns at all.
Then in early 1997, the complaints began to roll into CLAS from callers
in the area.
Consultants who drilled through concrete for core sampling of the soil,
told a resident who was concerned for an asthmatic family member about the concrete dust,
that she was "hysterical".
A month later, on Monday 24th February, SHLEG organisers had to call a
Council officer out to stop work on the first day of demolition when it was observed that
the workers were unprotected from roof dusts, having neither respirators nor protective
clothing. No residents had ever been given a copy of the demolition conditions so it was
guesswork as to what they stipulated. The LEAD Group took precisely one month to extract a
copy out of the Council, having first been told it was not a public document. It was then
evident that the demolition conditions were determined by Council on 10th March, two weeks
after the demolition had begun.
On the 21st March another resident obtained an extract of the
"Remediation Action Plan for Proposed Townhouse Development", prepared by an
environmental management consultancy. The Council had determined as one of its demolition
conditions that:
...3. All demolition works are to be in accordance with a report
prepared by [the environmental management consultancy ie the "Remediation Action Plan
(RAP)"]...
The resident claimed that several practices "promised" in the
"RAP" had not been occurring:
The "RAP" said: "Dust will be suppressed at all times
during the works". The resident lived a block from the site and complained that his
daughter was suffering asthma badly as a result of the dust from the demolition.
The RAP said: "The site will be secured at all times to prevent unauthorised entry by
the public". The resident said "the site was left open and unattended for days
at a time".
The RAP said: "Demolition and site rehabilitation activities are
anticipated to extend over a period of several months, with demolition work commencing mid
March 1997." The residents knew the demolition of the roof had begun on 24th
February, 1997. At that time "they were pulling tin off the roof and throwing it on
the ground".
The RAP is not a public document and a copy must be requested from the
developer, or sought under the Freedom of Information Act, which could take longer to
obtain than the work itself takes.
The Conditions determined by Council for the Development Application
stipulated that residents would be notified about the demolition. However, when a resident
with three children under 5 living practically next door to the site, complained that he
had not been notified of the demolition, the Council agreed that he should have been
notified but that there was nothing the Council could do now.
The same resident is particularly concerned to know what will happen
when the concrete slab comes up. The concrete presumably covers old contaminated soil from
the first 8-10 decades of the plant’s operations. He asked the Council who was
responsible for ensuring that any monitoring of dust in air etc, promised in the RAP, is
actually happening, and that the information is being acted upon. The Council said the EPA
would be responsible. When CLAS asked the EPA contact officer on 22nd April, he said he
would ask the company that wrote the RAP if there were any results and whether he could be
given a copy.
The LEAD Group is concerned that the only dust in air standard
available to compare the results to is designed to protect workers exposed to the dust for
8 hours per day. The standard is not designed to protect more sensitive populations such
as pre-schoolers, asthmatics or older people with cardiac or respiratory problems. The
workers’ dust level is also not a good measure of how much toxic dust may be escaping
the demolition site and contaminating neighbouring properties.
On April 24th, the EPA contact person from the Contaminated Sites
section rang CLAS to say that he now had some results of dust monitoring carried out by
the consultants to the developer. (Is there not a conflict of interest when the developer
pays the consultants to provide proof of adequate dust control which the consultants have
written the RAP for?)
The dust monitoring results were not able to be released to the public
because the developer had paid for them. However, the EPA contact person was able to say
that he was satisfied that the results of dust monitoring, which were carried out in three
discreet weeks, did not vary significantly from week to week. And since the first week was
prior to the start of demolition work, the demolition work clearly did not add to the
amount of dust falling on the two monitoring stations at the Morris St gate and on the
fence line. However, when we got to discussing the actual dates of testing, it turned out
that the "background level" (pre-demolition level) was determined in the week of
26th March to 2nd April, more than a month after the residents claim the demolition work
began (14th February). The EPA contact person argued that on the day he inspected the
site, 15th March, he "noticed no demolition or at least no significant demolition
[had occurred]". We then discussed whether there was an action level to which the
dust monitoring results could be compared. He said "the particular test used was
designed to provide a long term comparison of total suspended particulates (TSP) and the
method was acceptable to the EPA, it gives results in grams per square metre per month,
but the EPA does not have a number [an action level] to compare the results to." He
said he would suggest to the consultant that they use a method which uses a high volume
sampler to suck the air in and calculates the amount of dust trapped by the air sucked in
over 4 or 8 hours. The result is in grams per cubic metre and can be compared to a
standard which the EPA has some jurisdiction over. We lamented that the demolition work
was over.
Another resident looked for the "water spray equipment"
promised in the RAP, and found nothing but a broken water main washing grey dust down the
street in the gutter. Would this not be in contravention of the Clean Waters Act
administered by the EPA? In mid April the demolition workers were still wearing shorts
even though the RAP said: "Long trousers and long-sleeve shirts will be worn by all
workers at all times."
The Demolition Conditions determined by Council did not stipulate that
the work had to be done by a licensed demolition company even though all demolition
companies in NSW were supposed to have had a Workcover licence, as of August 1996. Even a
company which has applied for a licence is not permitted to undertake demolition work
until the licence is approved. On 22nd April the Workcover Authority was notified of the
name of the demolition company, and promised to attend the site as the company was not
licensed. Workcover had apparently publicised the need for licences amongst demolition
companies and their professional association, but the EPA officer who advised Council on
the appropriateness of the RAP did not know, as Council apparently did not, that the
demolition contractor had to be licensed. The Council officer said she would have expected
to have been informed by Workcover Authority when it reviewed the RAP, if the demolition
company required a licence. Workcover later told CLAS that under the new regulations,
Workcover is not required to review work plans.
The day after the Workcover visit, when the building had already been
levelled, residents noticed for the first time two signs saying: "Danger - Demolition
in Progress" and "Hard hats to be worn in this area". Water spray equipment
had materialised - a man was holding a hose. When CLAS called Workcover we were informed
that although the demolition company which had been given the demolition permit by the
Council was not licensed (the company had applied for a demolition licence) the company
was nevertheless permitted to carry out the work because it had recently changed its name
(why?) and there were competent persons in the previous company who were licensed to do
demolition work and were apparently still with the new company.
We were also advised that the demolition of an industrial building
which is less than 10 metres tall, and in which the work will be done by hand, ie without
machinery, does not require a demolition license. Also, the removal of up to 200 square
metres of bonded asbestos material (eg fibro cement) does not require an asbestos
abatement licence.
The lead plant demolition case is obviously continuing, but this
article was put together at this time to help other community groups gear up for the
"demolition conditions" process in their area, notably the Royal Alexandria
Children’s Hospital with its two declared contaminated sites and 13 asbestos sites
will have demolition works being put out for tender (by the Department of Public Works)
this year. Also in Leichhardt Council area, an ex-iron foundry site has had a housing
development approved, and presumably the lead, zinc and copper contaminated site will
require some demolition first. Residents have been refused the results of the
consultant’s site assessment because they are owned by the developer. Two of the
directors of the developer company are councillors on Leichhardt Council but only one of
them abstained from the voting on the development application.
LATE NEWS: On April 23rd The LEAD Group Inc asked Ashfield
Council’s Manager of Planning and Building for a complete copy of the RAP, after
being told by Council staff that we could only view and take notes from the document at
the Council, it would not be permissible to take a copy away. The Manager organised that a
copy of the full approximately 120 page report be placed in Ashfield Library and one in
The LEAD Group’s library and that a relevant 22 page extract be distributed to
interested persons. The Manager also committed Council to organising a small consultative
group by the end of the week, of residents, the developer, consultants, Council, SHLEG and
The LEAD Group Inc. We are most gratified that the community’s concerns will be
heard. By 9th May no further news was available on this matter, but The LEAD Group’s
library had received a complete copy of the RAP.
The LEAD Group has a vision that people will reduce their use of
toxic substances when they realise that toxic substances don’t just disappear off
the edge of the earth, because the earth is not flat; that toxic particulates put into the
air by industry, medical incinerators and motor vehicles, etc, stick around in building
dusts and soils until contained and continuously managed. So while taxpayers and
ratepayers are paying for several government departments and the Council to manage the
lead plant demolition, and actually having to do the surveillance work themselves, the
industry which made the profits from selling lead for more than a century pays nothing,
and developers can refuse residents important information on the basis of owning
copyright.
Consumers should continuously ask themselves: Which toxic consumer
product can I not buy? Residents should continuously ask their politicians: When is
Polluter Pays legislation coming to NSW? When will lead production be taxed federally and
when will the federal lead petrol tax be distributed to help the states cover the costs of
lead’s cradle-to-grave management? When will we have Toxics Use Reduction Legislation
and Community-Right-To-Know? When will government departments coordinate their responses
to the vast array of legislation which impacts on the management of lead?
The NSW Community Lead Advisory Service is looking forward to working with the NSW
EPA’s Lead Reference Centre in order to achieve as much of the above as possible, as
soon as possible.
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