Primbee residents' worries about land clearing at a former copper slag dumping site over Christmas has sparked action from Wollongong City Council.
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The site at Korrongulla Swamp was used by Southern Copper as a copper slag emplacement site up until 2003.
The copper smelter closed in 2003 and the stack at the Port Kembla site was demolished in 2014.
A motion put forward by councillors Cath Blakey and Dom Figliomeni noted there were four days of land clearing undertaken at the slag site between Boxing Day and New Year's Day.
The site is subject to an environmental protection licence, managed by the Environment Protection Authority (EPA).
"The community has raised concerns that there has been a lack of public consultation by the previous and current owners, and lack of availability of monitoring records and annual audit reports, both of which are license requirements," the councillors' motion stated.
Cr Figliomeni understood residents' concerns about the clearing of what he termed a "contaminated site".
"Those sort of issues generate a lot of concern, a lot of mistrust in the community," Cr Figliomeni said.
"I do think it's important that we make our concerns known to the issuer of the licence, which is the EPA."
Cr Linda Campbell raised concerns about the timing of the land clearing, between Christmas and New Year's.
"If you could pick four days of the year in which you wanted to do something that perhaps wasn't totally the right thing to do those are the days I'd choose," she said.
Councillors voted to write to the government about the incident, seeking a review of the environment protection licence.
They also called for information around previous site audits "in respect to future permissible uses of the site" and that environmental management plan be developed and exhibited for public consultation.
Glen Humphries
I'm an award-winning senior journalist with the Illawarra Mercury and have well over two decades' worth of experience in newspapers. I cover the three local councils in the Illawarra for the Mercury, state and federal politics, as well as writing for the TV guide. If I'm not writing, I'm reading.
I'm an award-winning senior journalist with the Illawarra Mercury and have well over two decades' worth of experience in newspapers. I cover the three local councils in the Illawarra for the Mercury, state and federal politics, as well as writing for the TV guide. If I'm not writing, I'm reading.
