The discovery of further asbestos near a children’s playground has prompted local authorities to call for the urgent removal of all garden mulch at the inner-Sydney site.
The potentially hazardous material has been found in five samples after a child brought home a piece of the contaminated mulch from Rozelle Parklands and their carer alerted authorities.
Local father and Inner West Council mayor Darcy Byrne called for all the mulch to be replaced with organic, verifiably safe material.
‘There are now at least five locations within the Rozelle Parklands where asbestos has been found,’ he said in a statement on Friday.
Signs and barricades have been placed around Rozelle Parklands after asbestos was found in mulch
The potentially hazardous material has been found in five samples after a child brought home a piece of the contaminated mulch from Rozelle Parklands and their carer alerted authorities
‘Clearly, the entire batch of mulch that has been used in the parklands poses a risk to the safety of local residents.’
Mr Byrne took aim at John Holland, the contractor behind the park development, saying the firm had ‘manifestly failed’ to provide a safe facility despite receiving enormous public funding.
‘There’s no room for error or excuses – all of the mulch must be removed from the park without delay,’ he said.
John Holland has been contacted for comment.
Authorities are now scrambling to come up with a plan to remove the mulch in the 10-hectare park amid fears of wider contamination.
Premier Chris Minns said his focus was on making the site safe and ensuring the community understood a potentially toxic substance was on the site.
‘The contractor is obviously responsible for this and once we deal with the immediate threat then we’ll get into the nitty gritty of who pays for it,’ he said.
Mr Minns added he was not aware of any further sites being contaminated with the same product.
The parklands, built over an inner-city underground interchange for a controversial motorway project, has been closed since Wednesday.
The parklands, built over an inner-city underground interchange for a controversial motorway project, has been closed since Wednesday
Transport for NSW confirmed on Thursday that three of 34 extra samples taken from across the site returned positive results for traces of bonded asbestos.
The material is considered low risk compared to friable asbestos.
The transport agency and John Holland were working on plans to safely remove and replace the affected recycled mulch.
The NSW Environment Protection Authority said it was working to determine the source of the asbestos and ensure it had not been used elsewhere.
‘Very early advice from the supplier to the EPA is that the use of this batch of mulch is not widespread,’ a spokesman said.
While deemed to pose a low risk to human health, the contaminated mulch was available commercially and had been used at other, undisclosed sites.
The site is expected to be closed for a minimum of several days.