The Legislative Assembly’s Planning and Environment Committee has shut the sheep pen door four months after the dipped sheep got away. Earlier this week the committee heard from two toxicologists that the health of residents living near former sheep dip sites had not suffered anything from abnormal levels of arsenic in the soil.
Just before the last election, though, the Government offered to buy the houses of several residents in Theodore for well over market values, and in at least one case the offer was accepted. Given that people had lived on these sites for some years _ and for several decades in another site in Lyneham _ without ill effect, ratepayers might well conder why the toxicologists were not consulted before the buy-out offers, rather than after it. But then perhaps there was not a great deal of time between the time the arsenic issue arose and the election. Elections tend to have this effect.
Perhaps it was inevitable that arsenic, residences and children would give rise to an emotive cocktail and that in these circumstances no government, government department is likely to win.
The toxicologists Dr Peter Stewart and Professor Michael Moore tested people from both sites and found no-one had abnormal levels of arsenic in their urine _the standard test. There were higher than normal levels in the soil near houses, but people do not eat soil, though there might be some concern about children playing in the soil. Arsenic is a naturally occurring substance and levels vary.
There appears to have been an over-reaction. Remedial work such as replacement or addition of topsoil might have been more appropriate than buy outs. That said, the Contaminated Sites Units has acted sensitively and diligently and apparently to the satisfaction of residents in all affected sites but Theodore. Mercifully, there are only a few sites in residential areas and we will not see the huge expenditure of several years ago that went with removing asbestos that arguably should have been left alone.
Perhaps the different reaction by residences reflected different concerns about property values, in Theodore, or desire to stay put in a well-establish suburb, in Lyneham, than fear of being poisoned. Fortunately, the experience, which began when the Minders of Tuggeraonong Homestead drew attention to a sheep dip on that site in their campaign to preserve it from housing, has now resulted in a draft scheme for notification and dealing with contaminated sites that might result in less hysteria while at the same time addressing causes for action.