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FOR the state government it has been a lingering headache since the 1970s but for people who lived on top of radioactive waste in an exclusive harbourside suburb of Sydney it is a matter of life and death.
Katie McGrath, who spent her early life at the site of a former uranium smelter at Nelson Parade, Hunters Hill, is pleading for the O'Farrell government to clean up the site once and for all in the interest of public health.
As a three year-old in 1975, Ms McGrath lost her mother, Iris, to a mysterious cancer. Nine months later her father, Fabian, also died from the disease. Both were in their 30s.
Ms McGrath is now struggling to cope with the recent diagnosis of another family member with a potentially radiation-related illness.
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At least six people who lived in Nelson Parade have died of stomach and other non-hereditary cancers.
''Every state government for four decades has known about this and all of them have sat on their hands while people have died,'' Ms McGrath told The Sun-Herald.
Despite decades of dithering and a parliamentary inquiry recommending the site be decontaminated and the radioactive top soil stored safely, the site remains affected. Over the years the government has bought contaminated blocks at 7, 9 and 11 Nelson Parade.
In October last year The Sun-Herald revealed secret plans by the then Labor government to truck 5000 tonnes of toxic soil to a special waste facility at Kemps Creek in Sydney's west.
The then premier, Kristina Keneally, abandoned the plan and the O'Farrell opposition went on the warpath in support of worried Kemps Creek residents. The scandal was credited with helping the Liberal Party win the seat of Mulgoa from Labor in March.
But the government now has to find a solution that will not lead to public demonstrations such as the one held by Kemps Creek residents on Friday.
The Finance Minister, Greg Pearce, was forced to admit last week that there was little option other than to move the waste to clay pits at Kemps Creek but Mr O'Farrell has asked for another report from government.
''I encourage you to wait until the decision is made,'' he said last week. ''My position remains the same: I don't want to see radioactive toxic waste at Kemps Creek.''
Meanwhile, Ms McGrath said her patience had run out. ''Robyn Parker [the Environment Minister] needs to step up and do something in the interest of public safety, stop all the talk and all the fuss about what the outcry might be if it is moved and get it done. People have lost their families, lost their parents, lost their children for something that has been known about for so long. It was avoidable,'' she said.
Despite some bureaucrats attempting to characterise the waste as only mildly more ''radioactive than a banana'', a 1987 report by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation found 37 of 226 samples exceeded 100 becquerels a gram, the level considered hazardous and requiring special disposal. One sample was seven times that level.
Ms McGrath said her parents probably went to their graves unaware that their family home had been built where the uranium smelter had operated between 1911 and 1916. About 500 tonnes of uranium ore were processed at the plant and radioactive tailings mixed into the soil.
Ms McGrath told the parliamentary inquiry in 2008 how her parents would dig in the soil, creating a vegetable garden and retaining walls. Her family has sold the house and she said she felt sorry for residents who were stuck in Nelson Parade, unable to sell because of the risk.
''I wouldn't put my kids anywhere near there,'' she said.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environmen ... .html#ixzz3iexPscUv
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