Duri fuel leak: Tamworth Regional Council to apply to NSW Water Minister Melinda Pavey for support for Duri locals with contaminated bores
RESIDENTS impacted by a fuel leak into Duri's groundwater supply may get a helping hand from Tamworth Regional Council and the state government.
The council is preparing to lodge a request with the NSW Water Minister Melinda Pavey, for some funding to assist locals whose bore water may have been contaminated by a leak from the Duri store's petrol tank earlier this year.
The council's acting director of compliance, Ross Briggs, said the state government could help in a number of ways.
Read Also:
"We are working with the water minister to get some funding to assist properties that have internally plumbed groundwater from the contaminated bores," Mr Briggs said.
"The assistance may come in the form of getting some water trucked out there for those properties to use and to get some plumbing connections to help them become more reliant on rain water than bore water.
"At this point we would prefer people use rain water over bore water just because of the concerns of further contamination and contamination of other bores.
"While people's bores may be OK now, there is always the risk that it may get spread through the groundwater bores and you could draw the fuel to your bore."
Mr Briggs said the EPA would revisit the site throughout the week, beginning on Tuesday.
That’s teamwork! We had a fleet at Duri today with teams from our incident management & environmental forensics units and our Armidale office working together on #groundwater#sampling. Its building on sampling carried out initially by Tamworth Regional Council earlier this year. pic.twitter.com/Te8VpvVwi1
— NSW EPA (@NSW_EPA) October 20, 2020
"The EPA have taken over regulation of the case at Duri and they are working with the store owners to see what remediation works can happen," he said.
"There's nothing actively happening in terms of remediation work at the moment, but the EPA will be out on site this week to do some water monitoring.
"They will be monitoring some bores to get a current picture of how things are progressing."