Sydney's Most Relentless Asbestos Offender.

One of the state's worst serial asbestos dumpers has continued to illegally dispose of hundreds of tonnes of deadly contaminated waste across Sydney after narrowly avoiding jail. Already owing hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, Dib Hanna failed to appear in court as the environmental regulator pursues him over eight fresh offences. Hanna had pleaded guilty to dumping 80 tonnes of asbestos-laced material on vacant land he broke into near Picnic Point in Sydney's south-west in 2012. "The asbestos had the potential to be blown by the wind into the air causing potential harm to the health of nearby residents who might breathe it in," Chief Justice of the Land and Environment Court, Brian Preston, found.The excavator and demolition contractor who at the time is paying off more than $200,000 in fines at a rate of $300 a month until 2072, having committed more than a dozen other offences. The Environment Protection Authority found that in December 2015 he had ditched 150 tonnes of waste near a home on Seventh Avenue in Llandilo, near Penrith. He was ordered in February last year to clean up the site, but six months later the waste was still there. The EPA found Hanna had dumped at least another 750 tonnes of asbestos-contaminated waste at properties in nearby Wallacia, Cranebrook and East Kurrajong, some vacant, others occupied. A property owner, who did not wish to be named, said she had responded to a flyer Hanna left in her letterbox advertising free top soil. Instead, she was left with waste that contained small shards of asbestos. The EPA said it could not comment on Hanna's case now that it was pursuing him for eight "repeat waste" offences, which carry a maximum penalty of $250,000 in fines, two years' jail or both.

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Property development in Sydney is booming, just about every street in Sydney at present has a house or apartment building in a state of demolition, renovation or transformation. Whilst, we could all speculate that popular television programming like Channel Nine's The Block has lead to an increase of property owners trying to improve their living spaces by any means possible, the reality is that land is something that simply is not being manufactured; that is, there's a finite supply - and demand is massive. 

Copper pipe filled with asbestos

“Asbestos removal jobs in western Sydney have increased 64 per cent since 2015, while Sydney’s eastern suburbs have experienced a 50 per cent jump, year-on-year,”

— http://www.smh.com.au/business/consumer-affairs/asbestos-removal-increasing-amid-nsw-renovation-boom-20161222-gtgh1x.html

As Australia's most desirable city and harbouring about 20% of the nations total population, Sydney has just about maxed out it's urban growth plan. Comparatively, New York with a total of 9000 square kilometres is home to 17 million individuals whilst Sydney has a whopping 12,000 square kilometres for a mere 4 million.
So why exactly are property prices in Sydney the second highest on the planet, second only to that of China?

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Mr Fluffy: A Concise Recap

Asbestos was used heavily in Australia for the better part of the last century, in fact, it wasn't officially made illegal until 2003 and even to this day, building materials imported from outside the nation are routinely testing positive for this deadly mineral. Of all the asbestos found in Australia, the most concerning is without a doubt loose fill or "friable" asbestos, although not as common as other asbestos products like fibreboard cement and roofing it was used in Australia's cooler areas as ceiling and wall cavity insulation. The predominant areas that utilised Mr Fluffy insulation "a blanket term coined to described Asbestosfluf, J&H Insulation and any other materials imported by Dirk Jansen during the 1960s and 70s" are located in Canberra's outer suburbs. Seemingly cursed from the beginning of development, the new homes being produced were planned in favour of an emerging design concept known as Radburn Housing. The concept born of resistance to the suburban boom incurred from the invention of the automobile introduced concepts of communal space, shared walkways and urban planning to minimise the use of vehicular transport. Whilst seeming well thought out, the gridded housing arrangement with thin access paths proved to do very little other than to become hot spots for criminal activity within any city that proceeded with the concept, from it's original New Jersey estate throughout the United Kingdom and even in Sydney's own Villawood. With failure spanning the globe, many of the Radburn estates were either demolished or redeveloped to conform with more traditional suburban layouts. 

“Everything that could go wrong in a society went wrong,”

— Philip Cox, NSW Public Housing Architect

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Remains of poorly thought out town planning.

Now, as interesting as this all is, what does it have to do with asbestos you may be asking? 
Well, as mentioned above, the majority of housing (both private and public) constructed in a Radburn'ian fashion was either demolished or reimagined within a short period of time to counteract the negative impact the layouts were having on surrounding communities. Simple enough of a task for most - however - by the end of the 1970s the Australian Government was already catching on to the harmful effects of asbestos and began measures to regulate the sale of loose fill fibres and certain other products and so began a battle of two evils. The question remained for decades, continue asbestos abatement works and deal with geographically isolated crime spikes or spend in excess of one billion dollars to create replacement homes for displaced public housing tenants and enact a process of land buyback for private owners. Well, it took a rather long time to come to a decision but eventually in 2016 the Australian Capital Territory Asbestos Taskforce announced a list of affected homes eligible for reimbursement via a buyback scheme, although seemingly an amicable solution for current property owners, further problems were raised when a number of title holders (unaware of the hazardous material contamination upon purchase) received what they believed to be less than the properties value when accounting for inflation, with one such family even going on to report that they were unable to afford the property in which they once lived after it's remediation. 

. . . .but the asbestos.

Now in the full swing of redevelopment these experimental suburban blocks are finally being addressed, officially recognised as some of the worst asbestos affected areas in Australia, it has been estimated that at least 30,000 individuals over the past four decades have been exposed to the raw mineral fibres that constitute the loose fill insulation. With more asbestos containing products being introduced from overseas industry, is there possibly a lesson to be learned from this story? Would less lives have been affected if the problem was addressed earlier, was it unavoidable? If you suspect that your property may contain previously undisclosed asbestos, it certainly pays to have it inspected. Ignoring the contamination will inevitably result in greater issues in the future. Don't be like Canberra - Call Ausbestos on 1300 045 355.

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