DHA project

I HAVE just read the blog issued by the DHA’s PR company after its recent information day about the Mt Lofty housing project.

After reading through the three pages of print I came to the general conclusion that although the document is headed “fact check” there are very few facts in it.

One very glaring omission is any mention about unexploded ordnances or lead and other contaminations in the soil.

I would have thought that since this site has been used as a firing range for more than 100 years that it would be a major preliminary consideration.

One publicly available Australian report by CRC Care about the matter begins by saying: “Contamination by lead and other metals are a major problem at Dept of Defence shooting ranges. As of mid 2013 work at a Western Australian shooting range had seen 3.5 tonnes of lead remediated from more than 3000 tonnes of contaminated soil.”

It also reports that “soil lead contaminations above 10,000mg per 1kg of soil are commonly reported at shooting ranges in New Zealand, the USA, England, German and Scandinavia”.

One site assessment in the US revealed lead contamination ranged from 27,000mg/kg to 233,142mg/kg of soil.

Contamination of shooting ranges may also include antimony, copper, zinc, arsenic and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

How much contamination is there at Mt Lofty and how widespread is it over the site?

Long-standing residents of Mt Lofty tell me that Mt Lofty was not just used as a target shooting area.

At times it was also used for full-scale night manoeuvres which involved the use of mortar cannons, slit trenches and pill-box fortifications.

How many unexploded mortar bombs and other ordinance are left in the bush nearby?

In the absence of their independent expert at the information day, all that Rob Winter and his management colleges could say is that they knew there was a contamination there they would do something about it.

To his credit Rob Winter did take a copy of my two pages of questions about this matter and give it to their expert to answer. Will we ever know?

Even with remediation why would DHA want to build houses on or even near polluted land? — STEPHEN JONES, Toowoomba