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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 10 Hansard (12 October) . . Page.. 2923 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

were released and confirmed the CFMEU's findings of unacceptably high levels of lead. ACT Waste management also acknowledged that they do not know how far back the lead contamination of the floc occurred.

I am glad that the ACT's Chief Health Officer, ACT Waste and Environment ACT are now working together to clean up the mess at the landfill and to test employees for lead exposure. But the Government must answer questions about how this fiasco occurred in the first place and this Assembly needs to make sure that similar incidents do not occur in the future. The question that has to be asked is why so much of this floc from interstate was being dumped in the ACT. What other interstate waste is coming here that we do not know about? Is the ACT becoming the preferred dumping ground of some interstate businesses?

The suggestion has been made that the low waste disposal charges here relative to Sydney have made this interstate movement in waste economical. Commercial waste disposal charges in the ACT are $25 a tonne. I have been advised by Waste Services New South Wales that in Sydney the charge for mixed waste is around $60 a tonne, depending on the tip. Waste requiring special handling, which this floc has turned out to be, is around $90 a tonne. In fact, waste with this level of lead probably would not even be accepted at a government landfill in New South Wales as the acceptable maximum level of lead contamination in waste there is 6,000 parts per million, whereas the floc has 8,000 to 14,000 parts per million. That raises a side issue of exactly where this floc will be taken if it is removed from Belconnen.

Another aspect of waste disposal charging in New South Wales brought to my attention is that there are different charges, depending on the type of waste, to encourage sorting and recycling of waste. That does not seem to occur in the ACT to the same extent. In fact, there does not appear to be any checking at the gate of the type of waste being brought to the landfills here. There is only general monitoring by workers of what has been dumped at the tip face, but that is too late to stop questionable waste being dumped at the landfill.

It is also odd that ACT Waste is so surprised that the floc could be hazardous. In the United States the disposal of scrap metal residues has been an issue since the early 1990s because of concerns over the material's toxicity. In fact, a magazine article that I have seen noted that lead contamination of floc can be a problem due to the presence of shredded PVC plastic and PVC sheathed cables, which contain small traces of lead. You do have to wonder how carefully ACT Waste examined the acceptability of this waste when it first started to accept it in 1996.

Let me make clear, however, that this motion is not just about the floc that is currently sitting at the tip. The CFMEU, on behalf of workers at the landfill, have been complaining for some time about poor management practices at the Belconnen tip, but these appear to have fallen on deaf ears in government. I visited the Belconnen landfill in mid-September and was appalled by the things I saw there. In 1996 the CFMEU first raised concerns about the public health risks associated with the sullage pond at Belconnen landfill which have still not been adequately addressed. When I was there the pond was close to overflowing and contained old tyres which apparently had been dumped there by accident. So much for the controls by ACT Waste over what is dumped in the pond.

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