FOR a century or so before the introduction of mains electrical power, and before the development of large-scale natural gas plants, the main source of gas for lighting and other uses came from an industrial process that converted coal into coke and gas. The Australian Gas Light Company, which eventually became AGL, began operating in 1837 and other plants soon followed.
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The railways had their own gasworks, as did some big industries, including the Newcastle steelworks. While many old industrial properties require remediation to be used again without risk to human health, Australia’s gasworks sites have proved some of the most difficult to clean up, because of the ways that copious amounts of “organic” carbon-based chemicals – some with long-established links to various cancers – had leaked and leached their way into the ground over the years. The NSW Environment Protection Authority lists more than 60 former gasworks sites across the state, including five in Newcastle.
Four of these, including the Clyde Street, Islington, site being remediated by its present owner, Jemena, and the old Steel Street works where the eastern side of the Marketown shopping centre now stands, are well known. Not so the former Waratah gasworks, which operated from 1889 to the late 1920s on land next to the present-day Waratah Village shopping centre.
Although the history of this site is still being pieced together, it appears that little remediation, if any, took place when the gasworks was dismantled. Some time afterwards, a triangular area bounded by Turton Road, Georgetown Road and Ellis Road was subdivided for housing, leaving a ticking time bomb of contamination that has taken decades to be discovered.
Given the controversies over other Hunter Region clean-ups – the Williamtown RAAF base and the Pasminco lead and zinc smelter, especially – residents in and around the affected area are naturally concerned about what the situation will mean for them. Perceived shortcomings in the official responses at Williamtown and Boolaroo – along with the continuing controversies over dust from coalmines and coal trains – have helped contribute to a community-wide wariness when it comes to accepting official pronouncements.
“Forgetting” that Waratah once had a gasworks won’t have helped the authorities whose job it will be to find a solution.
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