TOX - 60 MINUTES
Did anyone see last night's 60 minutes (I didn't)? The below is the transrcipt, this the link. This is exactly the sort of job that TOX needs to get the TDU upgrade done, and TOX have been talking to Orica for something like 18 months about how to do this job. Big possibility.
I've waded in and topped up. Should have done it at 9.5c but what the...
Happy reading!
Gumbles
Transcript: a deadly legacy
June 18, 2006
Tara Brown, Producer: Chris Blackburn
Serial polluters
TARA BROWN: This is a story about a giant chemical company and environmental vandalism on a monumental scale. Blatant negligence. A vital underground water supply poisoned and, above ground, a huge stockpile of one of the world's most dangerous chemicals. Just what you'd expect from a third world country, right? Wrong. This is all happening in the centre of Sydney on the shores of Botany Bay. The culprit is one of the world's biggest and richest companies, serial polluters who have got away with it for decades and now it's going to cost millions to clean up the mess.
TARA BROWN: If you're a man, approach with extreme caution covered up to the eyeballs. As a woman of child-bearing age, this is as close as I can get. No amount of protection is enough. What is it?
GRAEME RICHARDSON: It's a toxic waste, persistent organic pollutant, which is one of the 12 nastiest chemicals in the world.
TARA BROWN: A chemical that causes cancer, reproductive abnormalities, as well as skin, nerve and liver damage — a chemical that is all but impossible to destroy. How many of these barrels are actually on site?
GRAEME RICHARDSON: About 60,000, 58,000, something like that.
TARA BROWN: And that's not good at all?
GRAEME RICHARDSON: It's not good at all. No. We're desperately keen to get rid of it.
TARA BROWN: 15,000 tonnes of the highly toxic industrial waste hexachlorobenzene, one of the world's biggest stockpiles and it's hidden away in the heart of Sydney's suburbia. Why would you allow one of the world's largest stockpiles of hexachlorobenzene, one of the world's most hazardous chemicals, to accumulate in a shed 12km from the CBD of Sydney?
GRAEME RICHARDSON: Orica has been trying to destroy that stockpile of HCB for some 20-odd years.
TARA BROWN: You're not doing a good job.
Orica's senior manager, Graeme Richardson, is taking me on a tour of the Botany industrial park — for more than half a century, site of Australia's biggest petrochemical plant. Run until 1998 by the British multinational ICI, it made paints, plastics, solvents and a range of industrial chemicals. But ICI Australia, since renamed Orica, also created one of the biggest environmental messes this country has ever seen. Not just the toxic stockpile in there, all 60,000 barrels of it, but an even bigger disaster you can't see — the slow poisoning of a vast water table that lies under this site and the suburbs around here.
MARIANN LLOYD-SMITH: It's probably one of the hottest ground water plumes that I have ever encountered and it may be the hottest or the most toxic plume in the Southern Hemisphere.
TARA BROWN: The plume is the contaminated part of what was once an unending supply of fresh underground water used by industry and residents alike. It is the result of decades of chemical spills, leaks and accidents at the Botany plant. Millions of litres of cancer-causing chemicals seeping through the sandy soil and into the water. In some parts, these chemicals are in concentration 5000 times their safe level. Environmental lawyer Mariann Lloyd-Smith says it's industrial negligence on a grand scale.
MARIANN LLOYD-SMITH: Everybody knew that there was a large ground water storage area under that site. Everyone knew that it was sandy soils. And it takes a first-year chemistry student to understand that these sort of contaminants move through sand, move into the ground water and then that's where they stay.
TARA BROWN: This is the bore here?
DEREK PITTMAN: This is the bore here, yeah. It cost $1200 to put in and now it is just obsolete.
TARA BROWN: In suburbs around the plant, residents like Derek Pittman have been told by Orica not to use their bore water. What is your reaction when you get news like that?
DEREK PITTMAN: It was a bit of a shock. It was a bit of a shock to me and all I could think of was that Erin Brockovich movie I seen years ago. It could have been Botany.
TARA BROWN: What had you been using your bore water for?
DEREK PITTMAN: Mainly filling the swimming pool up and watering the gardens. I was a bit concerned with my kids swimming there for a while, but at the moment they're still healthy, so we just keep our fingers crossed.
TARA BROWN: Neighbour Tom Carpenter had the men from the chemical company call on him after the tests found vinyl chloride in his well.
TOM CARPENTER: They just said that it was a very, very poisonous thing that, over a period of time, could be rather dangerous.
TARA BROWN: So you had been watering your veggie patch.
TOM CARPENTER: Yeah. As you can see, it's not much of a veggie patch at the moment.
TARA BROWN: I can see you haven't been watering it lately.
TOM CARPENTER: No. I found after using the tank water there was a completely different taste, so the chemicals must have been doing something to the vegetable itself.
TARA BROWN: Is that right?
TOM CARPENTER: Yeah. It's a completely different taste.
GRAEME RICHARDSON: There was awareness of contamination in the ground water, but the extent of it and the extent of the concentrations of it were not known until about 2000, 2001.
TARA BROWN: Well, that's not right, is it? I mean, 1990 is when you guys became aware after you were ordered to do an audit.
GRAEME RICHARDSON: Well, 16 years ago we weren't aware of the extent of the contamination.
TARA BROWN: You knew there was contamination. You knew the ground water was contaminated. Sixteen years. It is extraordinary.
GRAEME RICHARDSON: Well...
TARA BROWN: And if it wasn't so serious, it would be a joke.
GRAEME RICHARDSON: I agree. I agree that the contamination that we have is serious. We are very concerned about the contamination.
TARA BROWN: If you're looking for a symbol of how things were done in the bad old days, then this would have to be it. On the surface, a carpark, but dig a little deeper and it's actually a toxic waste dump. Beneath me is 45,000 cubic metres of contaminated sand and ash. In 1980, the company decided to get rid of the stuff by wrapping it in plastic and burying it here. They then covered it with a parking lot and hoped that would be the end of it. Well, it wasn't. The carpark, is that another Orica disaster?
GRAEME RICHARDSON: It's not a final solution, obviously.
TARA BROWN: It's not a solution at all. I mean, you have a carpark that you can't use. You have this contaminated material now leaching out of this...
GRAEME RICHARDSON: It's not leaching out of it.
TARA BROWN: … plastic envelope. There are emissions from that site. You have signs up saying,
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