"No
matter what people say about how safe it is, I can tell you - as someone with
my experience - that it frightens the daylights out of me to have that sort of
tonnage sitting on the front door of Newcastle," Mr Richards said.
These words
resonated, tragically and dramatically, as news came in of the fertilizer factory explosion that
recently devastated the small town of West, in Texas.
According
to reports, that blast killed at least 14 people and injured 200, and destroyed
50 homes over an area of at least four blocks. Reports say that the explosion
registered as a small earthquake and that the impact was felt many miles away.
The precise
cause of the disaster is still being investigated, but media reports indicate
that it was almost certainly started by a fire and subsequent explosion
involving ammonium nitrate.
The West fertilizer
plant apparently stored 270 tonnes of AN, and questions have been raised about its
compliance with US regulatory requirements.
Newcastle's
stockpiles of AN (used as both a fertilizer and explosive) are significantly
larger than this. Orica's Kooragang Island plant stockpiles up to 10,000 tonnes.
Incitec has applied to store up to 12,500 tonnes at their Kooragang Island facility.
As I reported
in my February column, Crawford Freightlines are asking the state government to
approve storage of up to 13,500 tonnes at their Sandgate facility.
The
public exhibition of the Sandgate proposal attracted 24 submissions, and is
currently in the last stage of consideration by the Department of Planning and
Industry.
As the
company's response to the submissions observes, "most of the concerns
raised on public safety and human health risk focused on the risk of explosion
/ detonation."
In fact,
many of these submissions (including mine) referred to the potential catastrophic
impact of accidental detonation of such a large quantity of AN, many times
greater than that mentioned in association with the recent Texas disaster.
My
submission speculated that - if approved - the Sandgate stockpile might well be
the largest stockpile of ammonium nitrate in the world. The company's response has
not disputed that speculation.
The
company's response to community concerns reiterates that detonation risk was
considered in the company's hazard analysis, which complies with current state
government guidelines.
The
hazard analysis is highly technical, but the explosion scenarios it considers
are based on potential incidents involving up to 2,500 tonnes of AN (less than
20% of the 13,500 tonnes that the approval seeks), and don't appear to take
into account a potential catastrophic blast that could affect residential suburbs
kilometers from the facility.
As
Tony
Richards says, he's far from convinced that regulation of AN in NSW is
world's best practice, especially given that a worst case scenario
involving that amount of AN could be similar
to an atomic blast, causing hundreds of deaths and thousands of
injuries. If
evacuation were possible in such a case, it would have to be beyond the
Charlestown ridge.
The
company rejects calls for an alternative location for the facility, primarily
on financial and logistical grounds.
However,
The Greens NSW parliamentarian Cate Faehrmann has now called for the relocation
of all large stockpiles of ammonium nitrate away from residential areas.
Newcastle
Greens Councillor Therese Doyle has requested that Newcastle Council be briefed
by Mr Richards and other independent experts on the danger of large ammonium
nitrate stockpiles in the council area.
The submissions and other documents related to the Sandgate development
proposal are on the DPI website at: http://majorprojects.planning.
