Lead has Port lovers nervous

MIKE Kenny loves that nobody thought enough of his home town of Fremantle to knock over its old buildings and build shiny new ones.

MIKE Kenny loves that nobody thought enough of his home town of Fremantle to knock over its old buildings and build shiny new ones.

Mr Kenny, 53, is among residents who love the mix of grittiness and trendiness that comes with living near the port of Fremantle. But the port is also a source of angst for residents such as Mr Kenny, whose office window is just 6m from the freight line. He is nervous about its lead exports, which were temporarily halted by the Barnett government last month after a contamination scare.

Mr Kenny says the historic heart of Fremantle is its busy port, where live sheep are exported a short walk from the cappuccino strip, and he is proud to live near the wharf where generations of immigrants took their first steps on Australian soil. "We'd walk down past the terrace houses as kids and smell all these new smells like garlic that we'd never smelt before," he said.

"Now it's part of our diet, and it's greatly enhanced our food and culture. Made our cuisine tolerable, really."

Fremantle is Australia's fourth-biggest port for container trade. Mr Kenny went public with his concerns after a lead train derailed near his office in 2009.

"I believe you can't introduce something new, like a housing development, then allow a whole bunch of new residents in expensive condos to start complaining about noise from a port that was there all along.

"By the same token, you wouldn't want to see trucking and containers go up 300-fold without any regard for the people who live on that route."

A ports strategy to go to the Council of Australian Governments in Canberra next month will place new restrictions on property developers proposing projects near the waterfront.

And port operators will be ordered to develop 50-year business plans under the federal government's strategy to cope with a tripling of trade through the nation's ports.

Mr Kenny said he believed there was a way for residents and ports to co-exist.

"I think it's important to have a balance -- I'm in favour of the port but not to the exclusion of residents," he said.

When Mr Kenny's colleague Dave Brewer moved to the area 11 years ago, he chose a house 4km from where ships are loaded.

"There are challenges with living in a port city . . . we are obviously very concerned about the export of lead and toxic chemicals," Mr Brewer said.

But he said he believed housing could exist alongside ports.

Greens MP Adele Carles snatched the state seat of Fremantle from Labor in May 2009 partly because of her strong advocacy for residents' rights.

She has campaigned hard on the lead issue, and has raised serious questions about noise and other pollution from the port.

"We are being treated like a mining town but we are in fact a historic tourist port and city," Ms Carles said.