AS THE ‘gun’ Sydney team hums along laying and welding the sheets of special plastic that form part of the cap that closes the mono-cell at Urunga, project manager Clayton Colmer ventures a smile.
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“We are working against the clock with the predicted rain but these guys are a specialist crew and are moving it really fast – we’re nearly there,” the NSW Soil Conservation Service officer said.
“Nearly there” refers not only to the final phase of what has been a 14-month project on the ground preceded by a couple of years of careful planning, but also to the fact that 47 years after contaminated waste was abandoned at the Urunga antimony processing plant, the clean-up is almost complete.
With 12,000 tonnes of contaminated material now cleared from the wetland, treated and deposited in the mono-cell, the capping layers, of which there are eight in total, are now being laid.
Already 700mm of geotextile fabric, rock, bearing material, clay and plastic are in place, with a further 200mm of geotextile fabric, subsoil (11 tonnnes) and topsoil (seven tonnes) still to come.
Not far away in the freshly-filled lagoon, the floating excavator is slowly extracting the metal sheet piles that have been instrumental in the decontamination process.
Each one of the 500 piles is being removed, cleaned and carted away with a fifth of the job completed so far.
Re-vegetation and track work is also underway – the final steps in returning this piece of rehabilitated public land to the Urunga community.
“It’s great to see the project coming to an end,” Department Industry/Lands (DIL) Natural Resources Manager Richard Chewings said.
“There is certainly a sense of relief that all the contaminants have been removed but there is also the pleasure of seeing this great passive recreation area evolving.
“There have been a lot of ideas about what can happen here once we leave and we hope to see the community get involved.”
And the final bill? Close to $9 million, the bulk of which has been paid by DIL with help from the Derelict Mines Committee and the Environmental Trust.
Weather permitting, the fences will come down and the public opening occur at the end of September.