Project Description

The Rhodes Peninsula and Homebush Bay lie some 16 kilometres west of the centre of Sydney and within 1.5 kilometres of Sydney Olympic Park.

From the early 1930s the western portion of the peninsula was primarily an industrial zone used for chemical manufacturing. As a result of the manufacturing activities on the site the land is contaminated with dioxins, organochlorines, toluenes and phenols. Land reclamation with contaminated material has caused marine sediment contamination resulting in a commercial fin fishing ban being placed over Homebush Bay.

In June 1997 the NSW Minister for Ports announced that the dioxin contaminated sediments in the bay would be remediated. In February 1999 the NSW Government acquired the original site owned by Union Carbide which was the source of much of the contamination. The site had been remediated to a non-residential usage standard and currently contains a number of clay containment cells totalling some 300,000 cubic metres of contaminated material including dioxins and other intractable waste.

The objective of the Homebush Bay Remediation Project is to reduce dioxin contamination in the sediments of Homebush Bay and on the original Union Carbide site to make the bay safe and the land suitable for residential occupation.

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