A Sydney woman, who was orphaned at the age of four, believes that the deaths of her parents – who both died from cancer, within months of each other – are related to a contaminated site below the family home.
Nelson Parade, in Hunters Hill, is the site of a former uranium smelter. While the site closed in 1915, the woman believes it is linked to the untimely deaths of her parents and six of their neighbours. She has written a book explaining her discovery and hopes it will lead to complete remediation of the site, and an apology from the NSW Government.
“Make no mistake, this was a government that has blood on its hands, that is responsible for the deaths of my mum and dad,” she said in a television interview last week.
“The NSW government knew that radioactive waste was buried here in this street, but they didn’t tell anyone.
“They didn’t warn the residents, so the residents didn’t know that they were being handed a death sentence.”
The property on which the family home was built was cleared for residential use by the Australian Atomic Energy Commission in 1946. Following the deaths of several residents on the street in the 1970s, the NSW government purchased a number of the existing homes and demolished them, however, the affected soil is yet to be removed.
The NSW EPA confirmed that the land on Nelson Parade was contaminated with arsenic, lead and petroleum hydrocarbons.
“In 2008, a Parliamentary Inquiry was held into the former uranium processing site at Hunters Hill, Sydney,” it explained. “During the investigation, it became evident that there were two separate causes of radiation in the vicinity of Nelson Parade.”
“The foreshore of 7 to 11 Nelson Parade, Hunters Hill, is declared as significantly contaminated land in relation to chemical contamination and is required to be remediated in accordance with the Contaminated Land Management Act 1997.”
In May of this year, the NSW Government announced that as part of the remediation plans for the Old Radium Hill Refinery site at 7 – 11 Nelson Parade, an agreement had been secured with a disposal facility to take the contaminated material.
“The NSW Government has reached an agreement with waste handler, US Ecology, for the transport and disposal of the naturally-occurring radioactive material from the site to a fully-permitted disposal facility in the United States.”
“The cost of this latest solution is comparable to the cost of the onsite encapsulation proposal, without the ongoing requirement for the Government to maintain the encapsulation cell.”
“Once fully remediated, the three waterfront government-owned sites could be sold for residential use.”