photos, drawings, paintings from Peceli and Wendy about Geelong and the Bellarine Peninsular
Friday, May 22, 2015
Point Henry needs a clean-up
from w
Here's a story from the Geelong Advertiser about an assessment of Alcoa at Point Henry.
EPA orders Alcoa to start cleaning up the
toxic cocktail at Point Henry
·GREG DUNDAS
·GEELONG ADVERTISER
·APRIL 02, 201511:11AM
Alcoa has been
ordered to clean up its Point Henry site.
A TOXIC cocktail of contaminants has polluted Alcoa’s Point Henry
site, spoiling the water and leaving the company with an enormous clean-up job.The Environment
Protection Authority issued the company with a clean-up notice yesterday,
detailing the toll of 54 years of aluminium production on the site.The
potential contaminants it identified included aluminium, aluminium fluoride,
cyanide, carbon, polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons, spent pot-liner, salt
dross, sewage and industrial waste.
The EPA found the company had breached its act because water at
Point Henry, including groundwater, was so polluted it was “detrimental to any
beneficial use”.It said
the groundwater was tainted by iron and nitrate and was contaminated by non-aqueous
phase hydrocarbon and chlorinated hydrocarbon.
To
start remedying the situation, Alcoa has been given 21 months to complete an
environmental site assessment that determines the extent of contamination in
soil and groundwater at Point Henry.It also must plan and manage the clean-up
of any contamination it finds in that time that is judged to pose “an
unacceptable risk to the environment”, and support the EPA in an audit of the
700ha site.
MP PUSHES PT HENRY SITE FOR DEAKIN CAMPUS
That audit will form the basis of a more detailed plan to clean up Point Henry.
While Alcoa could be fined up to $350,000 if it breached the order, company
spokesman Brian Doy said the resources giant was “comfortable” with the EPA’s
requirements. “It’s part of the process (of decommissioning the plant), and we’ll
continue to work through that,” he said. “We understand there is still lots of
work to be done.”
The EPA began formal talks with Alcoa about remediation plans for
Point Henry midway through last year after the company closed its smelter and
prepared for the December closure of the rolling mill. EPA chief Nial Finegan
said Alcoa would be required to provide quarterly updates on the progress of
the clean-up.“The clean-up process will take time and needs to be thorough and
well planned so the site can provide important environmental and community
benefits for the region into the future,” Mr Finegan said.“EPA will work with
Alcoa, through the use of its regulatory tools, to ensure Alcoa is held to
account and that the clean-up is completed in a timely manner.”
State Environment Minister and Bellarine MP Lisa Neville welcomed
the release of the clean-up order.
“The
EPA has developed a strong relationship with Alcoa and together will make sure
the site is rehabilitated appropriately,” she said.
Geelong
Environment Council president Joan Lindross, a community adviser to Alcoa on
the clean-up, said it was unknown how much damage had been done at Point Henry
since Alcoa’s arrival in 1960.“The Geelong Environment Council is really keen
to look at all the details because there are certainly concerns within the
community about Point Henry,” she said. “There is a lot of buried waste on that
site, and there is a concern that pollution has been and will continue to go
into Corio Bay.” AND ALSO
Landscape
Architecture Student Prize
26 March 2015
The Landscape Student Prize is an exciting new award program
offered by Landscape Architecture Australia and the Australian Institute of
Landscape Architects to recognize outstanding student work. Every student
graduating from an AILA-accredited Australian landscape architecture program in
2014 was considered for the prize, and one winner from each of the schools was
selected by their program during end-of-year presentations.
Congratulations to Tang Bryan Shen Siong who is the 2014 Deakin
School of Architecture and Built Environment prize winner for his projectThe
Metamorphosis of Point Henry, Jillong.
The Metamorphosis of Point Henry, Jillong seeks to transform an
abandoned and polluted site into a healthy and recreational environment,
conserving this spectacular site's historic and cultural meaning to reflect its
layers, but also Geelong's cultural evolution to prompt future thinking.
Point Henry is a Geelong landmark embodying both Wathaurong
country and colonial settlement, and epitomizes a landscape transformation from
maritime and economic to post-industrial, while hosting vibrant recreational
and bird watching activities. Recently redundant as the site of an aluminium
smelter, Point Henry needs a radical juxtaposition of design ideas for a new
vision.
This design draws inspiration from the flight of Bunjil – an
Aboriginal mythological creator deity – over Corio Bay. Bunjil's wings
"hugging" and "protecting" the landscape are seen in a
wing-cell structure offering a "respiratree" (respiratory + vegetation)
framework to both heal and enable flight. AND ALSO
·DANNY LANNEN
·GEELONG ADVERTISER
·JANUARY 25, 201510:32AM
Critical decisions need to be made over the long-term use of the
former Alcoa site.
A
CRUISE ship port, a Deakin Univeristy campus or a new residential estate are
just some of the possibilities for Alcoa’s prime Point Henry site, according to
Environment Minister Lisa Neville.The
Member for Bellarine stressed this week Geelong faced critical decisions
determining long-term use of the land once rehabilitation is complete.“It’s
going to be a really critical decision for the community to get this right,” Ms
Neville said.“This massive site,
north facing bay, near the beach, something that is in line of sight as you
come into Geelong, what is it that’s the right thing to do there? We know it‘s
a deep water port there, it’s got a pier, should we utilise that or should we be
looking at residential. What I’m encouraging in government at the moment and
having discussions on at the moment is to look at doing a whole-of-government
process over that whole area of that land, working with the community about
what’s going to deliver the best outcomes for our region because we’ve got to
get this right.”
Alcoa and
the Environment Protection Authority are continuing negotiations on
requirements for clean-up of the site after the closure of the smelter and
rolling mill last year.
A timeline for work has not yet been
established but EPA chief executive Nial Finegan said the authority was
reviewing Alcoa’s draft clean-up plan.“The plan is required to detail the various
actions to clean up waste and contaminated soil, sediment, surface water and
groundwater from the premises,” Mr Finegan said. “Alcoa has now submitted
comments on the draft notice issued to it by EPA, as is standard practice. EPA
will now review these and clarify the final notice requirements. It is
anticipated the final notice will be issued in late February.”
He
stressed the clean-up needed to be thorough, staged and well-planned. “The EPA
will work with Alcoa through the use of its regulatory tools, requiring the
clean-up to be completed in a timely and thorough manner,” he said.
Alcoa
asset planning and management director John Osborne said a project team would
work closely with the EPA in accord with environment protection laws.
“While some minor activities have been
undertaken to date, detailed planning is now underway for the full-scale decommissioning
process which is expected to commence in the near future,” Mr Osborne said. “This
will include recovering and selling scrap materials from inside the smelter
and rolling mill and removing and recycling equipment.” Mr Osborne said that
given the complexity of the project, “we are still developing timelines”.
Babasiga (pronounced bambasinga) is the dry land of Macuata in northern Fiji - our place in the sun in Fiji. Peceli is from Fiji from the village is Vatuadova and the beach is Nukutatava. Peceli Ratawa passed away on 27th December 2015 so this is Wendy's blog now. Wendy is an Australian and today live in Geelong, Australia.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home