Cleaning up Australia's 'brownfields' is the
key to creating sustainable cities, according
to Niall Johnston.
Image: iStockphoto

Australia needs to re-develop its old industrial sites, not only for their real estate value, but also so we can have more sustainable, healthier and well-planned cities.

Redeveloping ‘brownfield’ areas – like the Melbourne Docklands and Sydney’s Homebush Bay and Rhodes Peninsular – is a cornerstone of sustainable urban development which makes best use of transport, utilities and other infrastructure, Niall Johnston of the NSW Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water will tell the CleanUp 09 conference in Adelaide tomorrow.

“It’s not just about recycling land. It is also about developing our cities in the most sustainable way, as regards their use of energy, resources and infrastructure,” he says.

Mr Johnston said it has been variously estimated that Australia has between 10,000 and 160,000 potentially contaminated industrial sites, many of which lie close to the urban heart – and which now need to be cleaned up and redeveloped.

Fortunately Australia has a mature framework for brownfields redevelopment in place nationwide, underpinned by legislation in every state and territory. NSW led with specific legislation in 1997 , he says.

“Australia is also fortunate in having a mature remediation industry supported by a robust, structured framework for the assessment of site contamination via the National Environmental Protection Measure (NEPM) 1999,” he adds.

This legislative framework, combined with a much more transparent approach to engaging the community, places Australia in the world forefront in contamination clean-up of brownfield sites when compared with other countries, Mr Johnston argues.

“We certainly have the technical ability to clean up an old industrial site so it is safe to use for residential or other development – but there has to be more than just technical proof: the community has to be comfortable with the idea of living on a formerly contaminated site.”

This, Mr Johnston says, can only be achieved by both environmental managers and polluters being open and transparent with the community, engaging them from the outset and explaining how the clean-up is to be achieved and how it has been carried out.

“The NEPM talks about community consultation during assessment and in NSW we regularly insist on the polluter engaging with the community through out the process from investigation through to redevelopment. This, we find, leads to a much better outcome, which the community is far more willing to accept.”

How many brownfield sites remain to be cleaned up is uncertain, but Queensland has estimated it has about 4000. These sites are handled differently in different states, according to local regulation.

Brownfields tend to be concentrated in areas long associated with heavy industry such as petrochemical refining, chemical manufacture, application and manufacture of pesticides, coal gasification, mineral processing, and ordinance manufacture as well more unusual activities such as radium refining.

“The main impediments to brownfield development are perceptions regarding blight and the high cost of remediation compared to “greenfield” sites. However if broader environmental costing is taken into account then the viability of brownfield redevelopment becomes more attractive,” he says.