AN ALLIANCE between the Tamworth Regional Council, the 13,000-member strong Australian Manufacturers Workers’ Union (AMWU) and the Asbestos Diseases Foundation of Australia (ADFA) will begin campaigning for the rehabilitation of the Woodsreef asbestos mine site 18km east of Barraba.
Councillors voted on Tuesday evening to approve a recommendation put to it as a matter of urgency by the soon-to-retire councillor, Shirley Close. Their support was unanimous.
Cr Close described the State Government’s lack of activity in ensuring the site was rehabilitated as a “disgrace”, and said the Environment Protection Agency exuded hypocrisy.
“Their behaviour is totally indefensible,” Cr Close said.
“They should mine it or clean it up.”
Cr Close said contact on Tuesday with AMWU’s NSW secretary Paul Bastion had been the genesis of the alliance.
Mr Bastion said the union and ADFA had close ties in the court battles to gain compensation from James Hardie Industries for victims of mesothelioma and other asbestos-related diseases.
He said the union and the ADFA were appalled a chrysotile mine was bare to the elements and the State Government and its departments were refusing to act on it.
“The World Health Organisation (WHO) says there is no safe threshold for any kind of asbestos,” he said.
“WHO said it was a category one carcinogen. It can and does cause cancer.”
Mr Bastion said Australia could not call for any worldwide ban of asbestos if the State Government could not get its own backyard in order.
Cr Close said two reports – one prepared in 1997 by consultants Dames and Moore, the other a draft prepared by the NSW Department of Mineral Resources that appeared in 1999 – have called for the remediation of the site, and upgrading and re-routing of the road that daily carries children to school between the mine site and tailings dump.
That the remediation work had not been carried out, according to the reports’ recommendations, was an “utter disgrace”, Cr Close said.
“They make a mockery by doing nothing about it,” she said, referring to the decade of inactivity by the State Government.
“This is a State Government problem, they need to fix it.”
Cr Close said the government needed to pay heed to the World Health Organisation ruling on white asbestos that said there was no safe threshold for the mineral fibre.
She was also critical of a State Government decision to place the issue in the lap of Hunter New England Health to carry out a risk assessment of the mine site.
Hunter New England Health public health unit director David Durrheim said the taskforce established to investigate the Woodsreef mine at Barraba met on Wednesday of last week.
The taskforce, which is being led by the Department of Primary Industries (DPI), also includes representatives from the Department of Environment and Climate Change (DECC), NSW Health and Hunter New England Health’s public health unit.
Following an inspection of the mine, the public health unit has made recommendations to this taskforce, including further environmental monitoring of the site.
Dr Durrheim said the DPI was assessing the options for remediation of the mine site.
Cr Close said she believed the area health service did not have staff experienced or qualified to carry out such an assessment.
A folder of information about the site that includes photographs of the mill and the mine’s tailings has been mailed to every Minister in the NSW parliament, Cr Close said.
“It’s pretty nauseating,” Cr Close said about the material lying around the site.
“Why are we letting the NSW Government leave it there? We are not second class citizens.”
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