St Albans resident wants council to buy her home after toxic waste discovery
After shock revelations last month that St Albans residents were living on a toxic waste dump, grandmother Jannet Batty wants out. She is now one of many who want the council to buy their homes.
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For almost four decades, Melbourne grandma Jannet Batty has lived on her quiet suburban block in the western suburbs, unaware of the toxic waste dump beneath her.
But after shock revelations of contamination in St Albans last month, she and other residents now want the council to buy their homes.
The first inkling something was amiss came in 2013 when a council officer knocked on her door and asked to check the soil.
Ms Batty, 67, thought it odd. After testing the back yard and taking gas readings from her sinks, he left.
“That’s all I heard,” she said. “It went to the back of my mind; we never got a record of what they found.
“I knew there was a tip nearby, but I didn’t know this was quarry and landfill when we bought, and I was never told.”
Seven years passed until last month, when again there was a knock at the door from a council worker.
He handed over a thick document and said it was likely waste was buried below her family home and vapour from the underground had been leaking into her property for decades.
Amid the hundreds of pages, Ms Batty would later find readings from the original tests that confirmed there was methane in her bathroom and under her kitchen sink.
“It makes me feel sick,” she said of her property of 38 years. “Now I just want them to take the house.”
House acquisitions are now a common topic of conversation among residents on her street. Not knowing exactly what is underground, many want out.
An elderly neighbour of Ms Batty’s, who asked not to be named, said for years he had been digging up refuse in his backyard. “I went to plant some fruit trees and only 50cm into the ground I started finding rubbish, plastic and cans,” he said.
He also got a knock on the door last month.
In total, Brimbank City Council informed 69 private property owners — mainly in Denton Ave, St Albans — they potentially have household and industrial waste buried on their block.
According to the reports seen by the Herald Sun, this includes toxic materials such as oil, acids and poisons that were disposed of in the old Sunshine landfill that stayed open until the 1980s.
At its height, the site accepted half of Melbourne’s domestic garbage and a third of the city’s industrial waste.
In its defence, Brimbank council said local government changes over the years had contributed to the saga.
This includes the old Sunshine Council rezoning area for redevelopment before later amalgamating to create the new council, and other historic planning decisions including subdivisions. New laws about community health at former landfill sites also play a part.
Late last year, the Environment Protection Authority advised the council that an explosive 2013 report had identified a “high risk” to human health at former landfill sites. Inexplicably, residents are now being told the risk is low and they are simply being informed due to changing legislation on July 1.
Brimbank’s mayor Georgina Papafotiou maintains that while the issue is distressing for residents, there is no risk now.
But the council has approached the Victorian Government seeking assistance if the cost burden becomes overwhelming.
In the meantime, residents are in limbo.
Ms Batty said: “They say it’s not any risk to your health now, but your house could have blown up because of the gas or you could have suffocated from methane.
“That’s what they said to us. I said, ‘So we are not dead so don’t worry about it?’ And they said, ‘Yes’.”
Her daughter Brooke Batty, 36, says since that knock on the door, she wonders about the health impacts. “We don’t know what’s in our house,” she says.
Many residents have had cancers, women have had multiple miscarriages and stillborn babies. One dog breeder reported an entire litter born with deformities.
“Is it just bad luck or is it something else?” Brooke said.
Some residents who looked at a USB handed over by the council, said thousands of pages of documents on it offered more worrying detail.
They are looking at legal options. But regardless of the outcome, Jannet says it doesn’t really matter now, as “it’s 38 years too late”.
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