Government refuses to buy out residents of toxic ‘red zone’

THEY can’t drink the water, and nobody wants their contaminated properties, but the federal government still won’t buy the residents out.

THEY’VE again been left on their own in the “red zone”.

Residents of a “red zone” of toxic contamination near Newcastle have been dealt a fresh blow. The same government that supplies them with bottled drinking water because the local supply is unsafe has decided not to buy back their contaminated properties.

It’s the latest disheartening instalment in a battle that leaves the Williamtown property owners with worthless properties, and no escape from the contamination they say has already cost lives.

The “red zone” has been linked to a cancer cluster that has seen 50 residents diagnosed on a single road.

The community has now suffered another one-two punch from the federal government, A Current Affair revealed on Tuesday night.

A government health panel released a report saying there was no evidence the chemicals in firefighting foams detected on their land had a “large impact” on human health, leaving the Williamtown residents incredulous.

The expert panel’s report found “fairly consistent” evidence linking the chemicals to a slew of human health effects, including impaired immune and kidney function, altered thyroid and hormone levels, increased cholesterol and uric acid, early menopause, late onset of menstruation and low birth weight in babies.

But the level of health effect for highly exposed individuals was “generally still within the normal ranges”, the report found, and there was no evidence they developed disease as a result.

Williamtown RAAF base. Picture: The Daily Telegraph

The report contradicts overseas studies, including research in 2016 by the US Environmental Protection Agency, which in 2016 concluded the chemicals were hazardous to human health. Last year, its National Toxicology Program found they were “presumed to be an immune hazard”.

But the federal government has used the new report as a basis walk away from a buyback of 650 contaminated properties in the “red zone” — a five-kilometre radius area near the RAAF base outside Newcastle.

Williamtown and Surrounds Residents’ Action Group president Cain Gorfine branded the federal government “heartless” for allowing the Department of Defence to destroy the residents’ properties and walk away.

“They really are just a bunch of bureaucrats concerned only with limiting liability and hoping that we are gullible enough to believe their spin,” he told the Newcastle Herald.

For more than four decades the RAAF used firefighting foam containing toxic per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) at its bases across Australia, which leached into soil and waterways.

The use of the chemicals at defence bases across Australia is now the subject of a number of class actions, not least Williamtown.

There are now 23 sites around RAAF bases nationwide being investigated for PFAS contamination.

Which is why Williamtown “red zone” residents suspect the government has welcomed the new report.

Residents make no bones about the Defence Department’s role in the contamination. Picture: ABC

“Hang on,” they told ACA, “if there’s nothing wrong with the PFAS chemicals, why am I still not allowed to eat any produce, why am I still not allowed to eat the eggs off my land, the beef off my land, and why is there government still supplying us with bottled water?”

Residents said they were “devastated, but not surprised” by the government’s stance.

Originally published as Government refuses to buy out residents of toxic ‘red zone’