By Kirsty Ross
THE public will have to wait for at least a year before they can return to a 17-hectare Altona park as potentially harmful levels of lead are removed.
In August, Star revealed levels of lead at Truganina Explosives Reserve were too high for the intended use of the site.
It threw planned re-development at the site into disarray. The contaminated soil is mostly around the caretaker’s cottage and the park’s 1897 homestead.
Truganina Explosives Reserve was used for handling and shipping of explosives from 1901 to 1962, before Hobsons Bay City Council took over its management and started to develop it as a tourist destination.
Volunteers have been working at the site for several years on weed eradication, planting and restoring the original garden – some of which will be destroyed. The council provided medical counselling to those more than 40 volunteers of the Truganina Explosives Reserve Preservation Society concerned over their health.
Taxpayers covered the $4000 bill to move the caretaker and his family to a rental house in Williamstown in September and October, while the rear garden of the caretaker’s cottage was excavated.
The family has returned to the site now that it meets the standard of human habitation but are not allowed to eat fruit or vegetables grown on site.
Anyone who consumed produce grown from the caretaker’s rear garden’s vegetable patch before the contamination was revealed earlier this year, may have been exposed to the lead.
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The council allocated $100,000 in its 2006/2007 budget for the decontamination but admitted in August it did not have enough to complete the extensive works and further landscaping required.
Stephen Thorpe, the council’s parks and recreation manager, said the council had called on the owners of the land – the Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) – to provide financial help.
The council estimates the second stage of works – decontamination of about 7000 square metres of land behind the historic homestead or keeper’s residence – will cost a further $500,000.
“DSE have agreed to help but at this stage we don’t know how much money they’ll contribute, or when and how long it will all take,” Mr Thorpe said.
The high cost reflects the higher standard of the work required because the keeper’s residence attracts more visitors and the disruption involved.
Mr Thorpe said this was due to the risk of people walking across or sitting on the grass or children playing with the dirt.
He said DSE would also help evaluate costs to restore other areas of the large coastal reserve.
Judy Hindle, secretary of the Truganina Explosives Reserve Preservation Society, said the volunteers understood the closure of the reserve was a precautionary measure.
