Tamworth Regional Council planning and compliance director Peter Thompson spoke to media yesterday  about the latest on the crisis, with another community meeting scheduled for tomorrow at 6.30pm at the Woolomin Memorial Hall.

Council revealed a fortnight ago a leaking underground petrol tank at the Woolomin store had contaminated a number of local bores, prompting a warning to residents not to drink from, or use, bore water until further notice.

Water is being trucked into the community as the council works with the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) on the best way to tackle the emergency.

Yesterday, Mr Thompson said the council didn’t know how long it would take to clean up the spill, but it would certainly stretch beyond three months.

“We’ll be doing this for at least most of this year, I would have thought, and that’s still a guess,” he said.

“It could go for longer than that, but we can’t make those decisions until we have better information.”

Mr Thompson said they had met with senior representatives of the EPA on Tuesday night and would now engage contractors to carry out more precise monitoring of the spread of the fuel through the groundwater.

The council will also bring in consultants to determine how much contaminated soil is at the site of the initial fuel leak, and the best way to remediate it.

Mr Thompson said the plume of fuel was still travelling in a north-west direction, with contaminated bores up to 300m away from the store, including one at Woolomin Public School.

The council is also awaiting test results after more than 100,000 litres of water was pumped from the site of the contamination late last week. 

Mr Thompson said they had tested the bores before and after the water was removed to see if it had had any impact on the level of contamination.

He expects those results to be back in time for tomorrow’s community meeting.

In terms of funding for the costly clean-up efforts, the EPA has approved up to $40,000 for the works undertaken so far, but the council is still pursuing other funding avenues.

It was too early to estimate just what the final tally would be, Mr Thompson said, but “certainly more than $100,000, and probably markedly more than that”.

He said the council had been advised to appeal directly to the premier’s office for financial assistance, with funding reserved for “emergency” situations a possibility.

“It’s certainly an emergency, there’s certainly a health risk, there’s certainly a role for us to play in protecting the community and there’s certainly a level of contamination there which may lead it to be designated as a contaminated site, at least around the store,” Mr Thompson said.