Yesterday, a protest meeting urged Wollongong Council to reject a proposal to site a waste disposal recovery centre in the suburb of Cringila. This centre would process about 70,000 tonnes a year of demolition waste - bricks and mortar - to create road base and useful fill.
Nearby residents are opposed because it will create both noise and dust - and there will be a big increase in truck movements through the suburb, both delivering the waste material and trucking away the product created from it.
In examining this request Wollongong Council would do well to give thought to the future of Cringila as a suburb of this city. It was probably a mistake many years ago to permit residential housing there in the first place - because Cringila is right on the southern perimeter of the steelworks - and as such it is subjected to the pollution from heavy industry.
The residents at this protest meeting admit that they already are subjected to gas, sulphur smells, dust, silver rain - and that their homes and cars deteriorate from the fallout. Breathing this mixture is probably not good for human lungs, hence this is a suburb with dire existing problems.
Cringila is definitely the least sought after residential suburb in this city. House prices are the lowest on offer and those moving there do so as a tradeoff. If the demolition waste facility is approved it will merely add to a noxious environment - for which there is no hope of improvement.
Wollongong needs industrial land on which to conduct unpleasant industries - and the council is stuck with the problem of where to site this much needed waste conversion plant. It obviously has to go somewhere - and for a city constricted by being a sandwich between the escarpment and the sea - that offers limited choice,
Cringila residents made a choice when they bought cheap housing in full knowledge of it's defects. Now would be a good time to ban further housing approvals, and to adopt a policy of resuming existing housing whenever if comes onto the market. We need a policy of moving people out of what has become a noxious industry suburb.
Long ago the council made a bad decision. Now is the time to make a correction. Cringila is simply no place for people to be living.
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