Captains Flat residents welcome $1m to remove lead-contaminated soil

Residents of Captains Flat have welcomed the promise of a $1 million fund to help them remediate lead contamination on private properties, but some fear it will not be enough.

The former Captains Flat mine in the NSW Southern Tablelands closed in the 1960s, but the confirmation of lead in surface soils in 2021 has prevented residents of the town from building or altering their homes — or even growing vegetables in the ground.

Sandra Nielsen, who has owned her house in Captains Flat for three years, said it has been frustrating to have so many limits on what she can do to her home.

"It affects things like your gardening," she said.

"You can't do your veggie patches, nothing [can go] in the ground itself, you can't renovate your homes externally, there's no building extra rooms or significantly renovating.

"It affects community events in the area, because you can't really go and use the land for anything except for essentially setting up a market."

The financial assistance from the NSW government will be used for practical works to reduce lead contamination exposure in the area, such as applying clean topsoil and returfing affected areas.

The NSW Environment Protection Authority (EPA) has also expended its free surface-soil testing for Captains Flat residents to help them better understand what remediation their property may require.

Ms Nielsen said the $1 million community fund would "make a huge difference" for residents, even if the funding is not able to cover all necessary remediation work.

"It will mean that people can do things out here," she said.

"They'll actually be able to build their garden beds and be able to put their driveways in.

"It won't go very far — the million dollars — it just won't stretch as far as people probably [think], but it will be definitely a great start."

'It's really hampered the growth of the town'

Captains Flat Community Association president Ellanor Pavlovich said the government's commitment to the fund had been a long time coming.

"We've been advocating for it for years," Ms Pavlovich said.

"We were declared lead contaminated in 2021, so we're talking almost six years that we've been waiting with no action on private land remediation.

"It's really hampered the growth of the town. We haven't been able to build here for years."

Ms Pavlovich said it was appropriate that the government be responsible for funding the remediation work given the residents were not responsible for the lead contamination.

"We don't believe that the community should be the ones who actually have to pick up the cost individually, given that the contamination has been here and generated from a mining industry that was 100 years old," she said.

"We've got a number of properties in town that are ready to remediate, but we've also got a number of people who haven't even contemplated it because, until now, we have not understood how we could actually afford to do it.

"Which is why us having access to this fund will allow us to have a little bit more agency about how fast we remediate our own land now, and how we can actually develop the town, because it's been stalled for so many years."

Ms Pavlovich agreed with Ms Nielsen that $1 million was unlikely to cover all the needed private land remediation work, but that it was a good place to start.

"In that $1 million we've got the potential to remediate maybe 10 to 12 properties, with what we have estimated as the costs," she said.

"But I think that's probably appropriate in the first year.

"As long as this sort of funding remains available in consecutive years, then it will absolutely help the town to flourish and get back up on its feet."

Member for Monaro, Steve Whan, said the fund would be administered in conjunction with the Queanbeyan-Palerang Regional Council, and there would also be a "containment cell" set up in the area for contaminated materials.

"It'll be essentially about remediating things like soil — replacing, taking it out to a containment cell, which is going to be created in the nearby area," Mr Whan said.

"One of the costs in this, of course, is how far you've got to take the contaminated soil and so that's going to be quite close by, and that'll help us to keep the costs down a bit.

"So the EPA will continue to do free testing for people, and then remediation will be able to be funded by this $1 million."

Mr Whan said part of the reason it had taken so long to set up a fund for private land remediation was because awareness of the dangers of lead contamination in soil had "emerged slowly".

"And it's only been in the last few years that we've seen the order essentially applied by council in local areas saying that people couldn't build, extend or do things in their gardens," he said.

"So that's why it's become a much more pressing issue — partly because of our knowledge, but partly because of those restrictions that were being placed on the community."

He added that he would request more funding from the government if, as Ms Pavlovich and Ms Nielsen suspected, the $1 million was not enough to cover all necessary private land remediation works.

"What I've found with these in past is that they're often not fully subscribed, so we do want to encourage people to take it up," Mr Whan said.

"And if the money runs out, I'll certainly go back and ask for more."