Bathurst Regional Council is taking the lead and gearing up to embark on a project with Orange and Dubbo councils to identify contaminated sites around the Central West – and, importantly, to come up with a plan to fix them.

The project, dubbed Contamination Central, has been made possible by a $450,000 grant from the NSW Environ-ment Protection Authority (EPA).

Bathurst Regional Council is the lead council in terms of project management and has advertised for someone to take on the role of Contamination Central project officer.

They will develop local contaminated land policies, procedures and registers while advising on contaminated land management matters across at least 14 Central West councils. 

Contamination sites to be targeted under the initiative will include former sawmills, service stations and tanneries.

Council’s acting environment manager, Joel Little, said the EPA was looking for groups of councils to come up with ways to improve their capacity to deal with contamination. 

Three groups of councils in NSW were successful in attracting the funding and the Bathurst, Dubbo and Orange Alliance joined with the Central West NSW Salinity and Water Quality Alliance to ensure they were successful. 

Mr Little said a lot of small regional councils often don’t have the same resources as larger councils, so it is good to join together and help each other out.

He said at the moment, because of a lack of experience, many councils have to contract everything out.

“There is a lot of historic contamination in all of the local government areas involved – old sawmills, tanneries, service stations and orchards,” he said.

Mr Little said the project will increase the capacity of local government staff across the Central West to deal with these kind of everyday issues, although large projects like the remediation of the Bathurst gasworks will still need the involvement of experts in the field. 

The new project officer will help councils with technical aspects, policies and procedures, and will also assist in getting contaminated sites registered so councils know what to look for. In addition, they will assist with future planning and raising awareness of contamination.

“The main role of the project officer will be to deal face-to-face with local government staff,” he said.

“When DAs come in they will be able to advise staff on what needs to be done.”

It is anticipated the project will begin in the new financial year and run until 2017.