THE fence at the Bathurst Gasworks site has been repaired after several panels were damaged over the weekend.
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Jemena, which leases the site from the NSW Government, installed six new panels to replace the ones that were damaged when a car went through the fence on Friday night.
A spokesperson for the energy provider said it was able to find like-panels for the fence from a nearby supplier.
“The materials were available from a supplier close by, so that contributed to us getting it up so quickly,” they said.
The replacement came at a cost of almost $4000.
This is after Jemena spent $160,000 only a few months ago to erect the 2.4 metre-high galvanised steel security fence around the perimeter of the gasworks site.
The Jemena spokesperson said it was important to replace the damaged panels quickly so that people would not trespass on the site.
“It is a private site, so we don’t want people trespassing on the site, but our position of site security hasn’t changed and we are still monitoring that site quite closely,” they said.
Councillor Bobby Bourke has kept a close eye on the gasworks site since joining Bathurst Regional Council more than a decade ago.
He said he spent 12 years campaigning for a secure fence to be put around the site and said on Monday that the fence had to be repaired quickly as the gasworks was a dangerous area.
On Thursday, he said he was pleased to see Jemena took the incident seriously and repaired the fence in a timely fashion.
“I’m glad that they have the same concern as me about security,” Cr Bourke said.
“The quick response is better than the response that I’ve had previously to get the fence.
“I expected the wait would be a month or two and I wasn’t going to be pushing them.”
He said that the weekend’s incident had once again highlighted the need for something to be done about the gasworks site.
“It has put the gasworks site back in the picture,” Cr Bourke said.
“It is a site that either has to be used or knocked down.”
Early this year, Jemena revealed that it had lodged an application to hand the site back to Crown Lands.
Although the application was considered in late January, as of Monday Jemena still had not been notified of any decision being made.
Jemena has a 20-year lease of the site from Crown Lands, but determined several years into the lease that it no longer had a use for the site.
Cr Bourke was sympathetic on Thursday, saying Jemena was “on its knees begging for help” but no one was stepping up.