Fibre cement sheets rolling out at the James Hardie plant in Camellia.Credit:Peter Morris
The factory has been razed,but an estimated 80,000 cubic metres of contaminated soil remains buried beneath where it once stood. This soil is contaminated mainly by asbestos waste fill but also hydrocarbon,lead and arsenic. All of which,developers hope,would be exhumed under the remediation plan for the land.
The development application to clean up the site comes as the state government finalises a strategy that would potentiallyturn the industrial wasteland suburb five kilometres east of Parramatta into a new neighbourhood.
The former James Hardie site in Camellia,pictured here in 2012.Credit:Tamara Dean
Hardie ran the manufacturing plant in Camellia,where activist Bernie Banton worked,between 1957 and 1983.
After the factory was decommissioned and the buildings were demolished,the waste asbestos was buried up to four metres deep and capped with concrete and asphalt paving.
Under the application before Parramatta Council,the concrete would be broken with hydraulic hammers and lifted away beneath controlled air pressure tents.