TASMANIA’S Environmental Protection Agency is refusing to identify contaminated waste sites littered around the state as protest grows over the siting of state’s first controlled toxic waste cell.
According to Tasmanian Public and Environmental Health Network spokeswoman Isla MacGregor there is a “massive toxic time bomb in this state and people have a right to have more information.”
Ms MacGregor wants the EPA to make its database of contaminated waste sites in Tasmania available to allow for informed debate on where a $10 million C-cell should be sited.
“I don’t know where the stockpiles are. I’ve not even heard a rumour of where they might be. But Southern Waste Solutions, the EPA and councils need to come clean,” she said.
Despite a request from the Sunday Tasmanian, the EPA would not reveal where current stockpiles of contaminated waste, which could be dumped at a C-cell, are located.
Landfill operators Southern Waste Solutions, a joint authority for the Sorell, Clarence, Kingborough and Tasman Councils, has approval from the EPA to build a C-cell at its Copping dump site.
The cell will accept waste from disused landfill sites, former suburban petrol stations and sites contaminated with copper from agricultural companies. Contaminated soils from the Hobart railyard’s $75 million remediation project and from the Antarctic will also be dumped there.
Tasmania is currently the only state in Australia that does not have a C-cell. Waste is routinely shipped interstate for disposal or contained in various “short-term” holds on commercial and private property, including farms, scattered around the state.
Following strong public backlash to the C-cell at Copping, Greens MP Tim Morris has called on the State Government and EPA to investigate alternative locations for the C-cell.
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Ms MacGregor said there was also evidence that more than 4000 legacy mine sites and 176 former landfill sites exist around the state. She added: “I don’t think there’s any question every former landfill site has or is leaching contaminants into the environment.
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EPA director Alex Schaap said large producers of waste and some known contaminated sites were monitored by the authority.
However, he would not provide a list of the contaminated waste, its location or volume.
“I don’t think it would necessarily be useful to do that,” he said.
