Lead, asbestos on abattoir land
A REPORT commissioned by George Weston Foods in 2015 found evidence of lead and asbestos contamination on parts of the land the company intends to develop into a 1100 home housing estate.
The document, lodged with Toowoomba Regional Council, said waste, rubbish, ash, and some building products were buried around the site of the former KR Castlemaine abattoir, both on the western and eastern sides of Gowrie Creek.
It is on the eastern side of Gowrie Creek that George Weston Foods is proposing to build the master-planned Northgate Vista housing estate.
The company is almost three years into processing an application to vary the planning scheme to accommodate the proposed development.
The town planner acting for George Weston Foods, Precinct Urban Planning's Andrew Bullen, said it was often that case with former industrial land that part of the land can be, and is contaminated.
He said GWF had known the site was potentially contaminated for a long time and since the factory ceased operations in 2014 sought to investigate the extent of the contamination.
"There's an established legal process for the identification and remediation of contaminated land and (GWF) will follow it to the letter," Mr Bullen said.
Mr Bullen said first a staged investigation into the contamination had to be completed and GWF were part way through that process of identifying what was buried on the site.
"They're doing further work at the moment and there are people who have been on site for several months."
GWF would then have to appoint a third party independent auditor to ensure any investigation and remediation was ticked off in accordance with relevant laws.
"GWF are fully across that and have always known it, have always accepted it, and have never had any issue with it," he said.
Mr Bullen said GWF had developed land elsewhere on sites more contaminated than the former KR abattoir site, pointing to the Eliza Ponds project in Western Australia as an example - where a 100year-old industrial facility was transformed into a residential estate.
"The application that's before the council at the moment is only a preliminary approval. It doesn't allow any physical development to occur on the site without first going and getting other development permits," he said.
"All it does is put in place a set of planning rules (for the site). Before that land can ever develop, it's all going to be fully assessed and remediated."
A spokesman for Department of Environment and Science said it had been in recent discussions with Toowoomba Regional Council about the existence of contamination on the former KR Castlemaine site.