The EPA admits it’s likely contamination from firefighting foam, once used at the Williamtown RAAF base, is still leaking from the site.
Residents are worried – and say the so-called ‘red zone’ doesn’t scratch the surface.
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The EPA admits it’s likely contamination from firefighting foam, once used at the Williamtown RAAF base, is still leaking from the site.
Residents are worried – and say the so-called ‘red zone’ doesn’t scratch the surface.
The EPA are relying on scientists determining which way the water flows underground and this determines the red zone. It is in fact a best guess scenario.
The main underground water catchment is the Tomago Sand Beds or Aquifer. Common sense dictates that the water flows to the lowest point and so will the contamination. The centre of the aquifer would be the logical lowest point. This means the whole aquifer and water supply will eventually be contaminated.
I’ve rented and lived around the area but I’m out of the red zone now but I’ve also eaten food grown and caught nearby such as fish and oysters how do I get tested?
Mark Hogg . You would think that this contaminated water underground would flow to the bores that are drawing it to the surface. Stands to reason you take low contaminated water from underground that high level contamination water a short distance away will flow to that point to replace it. Not so with the PHAS contamination at Oakey . On Base the underground water contamination is up to 500 ug/L yet only 250 metres from areas where these levels have been recorded there are high production irrigation bores (24,000 gph and 35,000gph) on the air field boundary and their levels are only up to 10 ug/L. These bores until recently were used to irrigate farm land that is leased from the Commonwealth. The water allocation for this land is approx 275 megalitres annually. Puzzling why the PFAS dosen’t move freely with the underground water movement. When I pointed out to Defence Infrastructure spokesperson Chris Birrer “that even if you clean the water up underground you won’t be able to clean up the soil in the underground acquifer” he had a response to that and they have method they are exploring. Basically it would stabilize the PFAS and it would remain there and cause no further contamination to the water.Yeah right. It’s time for Defence to man up admit they they broke their own protocols in the use of this foam and the Commonwealth’s own environmental legislation ( of which there are no punitive measures against Commonwealth offenders) and they were reckless and delinquent in it’s use and we are just getting more of the the same in the “lipservice” clean up response.