Community voices concerns

By Kate Taylor

It will only take a simple stroke of a pen for Labor’s Planning Minister to change the current Maddingley Brown Coal Category C permit to accept PFAS contaminated soil at the Bacchus Marsh site, if MBC is successful in winning the tender.
It could mean no community consultation and no involvement or authority from Moorabool Shire Council.
Local Labor MPs Michaela Settle and Steve McGhie told a public meeting, held on Tuesday 25 February at the Bacchus Marsh Public Hall, that they will “take the concerns of the people to the Minister” – but could offer no further information on the project.
Speaking after the meeting, which attracted between 400-450 people, Moorabool Mayor David Edwards said it was good to see the local Members of Parliament in attendance but disappointing the project’s proponents declined an invitation to attend.
At the meeting, Cr Edwards told the crowd council is continuing to ask for information and technical reports relevant to the project, for which Transurban is now considering MBCs tender.
“At this point, the Minister has not called it in, making council the responsible planning authority,” he told the meeting, adding that if the Planning Minister Richard Wynne calls-in the project, which he says is very likely, council would have no involvement at all.
And for residents wondering why he isn’t coming out and condemning the project?
“I’m a councillor. And the most important thing a councillor has is their vote. If we go out and jump up and down and say, “we don’t want this in our community” then we can’t vote on it if it does come before council, because we would have a pre-determined position.”
However, Member for Western Victoria Beverley McArthur spoke at the meeting to vent her full opposition to the project.
She noted the soil from the West Gate Tunnel project is contaminated with PFAS chemicals, the same chemicals that led to the closure of Western Victoria’s CFA training college in Fiskville, near Ballan, in 2015.
“It is extraordinary that any contract would have been signed without proper recognition of what was going to happen to the contaminated soil that was known to exist,” she told the meeting.
“It’s appalling that we could have a situation where water could be contaminated. This is a famous and vitally important food bowl that feeds the people of Melbourne and beyond.
“It’s very poor form that Transurban couldn’t turn up tonight. Having a pop-up shop somewhere on a street is no substitute for being here and answering your questions,” she said in regard to the lack of community consultation.

SIDEBAR: Q&A

The public meeting was organised by members of the Bacchus Marsh Community Coalition.
At Tuesday night’s meeting, members of the crowd had questions and concerns about the impact of a potential toxic soil dump – on the Parwan Creek and Werribee River, which support the town’s market gardens, about the damage to local roads from trucks carting the soil to and from the site, as well as the effect on local fauna.
But no new information or reports have been made available to anyone.
“While Council has today received written answers to questions, it’s important for the sake of transparency that the technical reports be made available to us so they can be properly scrutinised. Without this, it’s difficult to see how our community can have any confidence in the process moving forward,” Cr David Edwards said.
“Most importantly, Transurban and the West Gate Tunnel Project must show that this project is safe, and they must detail exactly how this project will benefit our local community.”
Cr Edwards said the questions council had asked had been about environmental safety, community safety, risk assessment, economic impact on the town, cost benefit to the community, contamination levels and when the community consultation will occur, along with the availability of all the technical reports.
“The answers were a reiteration of the briefings we received but they didn’t contain any technical documentation,” he told the Moorabool News.
“They had a general attempt at answering some of the questions in a manner that didn’t involve any technical information,” he said.