Ben Cubby & Nidhi Prakash; 27/10/08
The explosives and mining company Orica has admitted its clean-up of highly toxic chemicals at Botany Bay will take more than 100 years rather than the decades it had promised. The industrial site near Sydney Airport is heavily contaminated with hazardous chlorine-based chemicals. But the clean-up was too hard for current technology, Orica said. “It’s probably more than a century,” an Orica environmental engineer, James Stening, said. “I suppose what we’ve done is redefine what long-term is.” The company has also just been caught burning three tonnes of chloride-contaminated material without notifying nearby residents, as it had earlier agreed to do.
Tags: Australia, Environment, Trade