Our mission at Tellus is to enable a greener, cleaner Australia — so we are proud to have played a key role in one of Australia’s most challenging and important remediation projects.
Alongside the NSW Government, Tellus has declared ‘Mission Accomplished’ on the clean-up of three government-owned properties at Nelson Parade, Hunters Hill, which have been contaminated with low-level radioactive waste (LLW) and other contaminants for more than 100 years.
The last of the containers of contaminated soil from the Hunters Hill remediation project has been transported safely to the Tellus geological repository at Sandy Ridge, in remote WA, and placed in permanent safe storage there.
From the late 1800s to the early 1900s, a radium processing plant and carbolic acid plant operated on the Hunters Hill site.
The soil along the foreshore of the site was contaminated with elevated concentrations of coal tar waste material and heavy metals, while site soils are also contaminated by low concentrations of Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material (NORM).
The material from Hunters Hill was sent by truck to the Sydney Freight Terminal at Chullora, taken by train across NSW, SA and WA to Kalgoorlie, then trucked a further 240km north-west to Sandy Ridge, for permanent storage under the Tellus geodome.
The transfer of the final container of hazardous waste brings the total to around 3000 tonnes of contaminated soil that has made the 3,500 km journey from inner suburban Sydney to the WA desert.
We are delighted that, as a result of our work, this beautiful and iconic site can now be enjoyed by the community.
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