LAKE Macquarie City Council has approved a controversial policy that will make a blanket assumption that 2328 properties are polluted, even if they aren't.
Following a lengthy debate this week, councillors voted to adopt changes to the Development Control Plan that will see residential properties within a lead contamination grid, drawn up in 1995, labelled contaminated.
The highly-contentious grid is bounded by Boolaroo, Speers Point and Argenton and was used as a guide to determine where the highest levels of pollution from the former Pasminco lead and zinc smelter were.
It was originally established, not to determine lead-contaminated properties, but to decide which children should be tested for elevated lead levels in blood.
According to council, the Standard Remedial Action Plan was designed to streamline development applications within the lead grid and save residents money on consultants' fees and testing. It's estimated it could save residents, who apply for a development application, between $5000 and $15,000.
Before voting to approve the plan, numerous councillors raised concern that residents were unfairly being burdened with the cost of cleaning up Pasminco's mess.
Boolaroo Action Group has been campaigning for almost a year against the plan claiming it makes residents "officially responsible for pollution they had nothing to do with".
The Cockle Creek smelter closed in 2003 leaving three suburbs with large swathes of land polluted by heavy metals to be cleaned up at residents' expense.
Cr Luke Cubis, who voted against the change, said about 40 per cent of residential properties, or 642 of 2382 in the grid, would be labelled contaminated when they weren't because the plan "assumes" a blanket level of contamination.
"A significant amount of residents are now going to be disadvantaged," he said. "I can see why some are not impressed... I wouldn't want my land to be called contaminated if it's not."
But a council spokesman said the plan "only assumes" the contamination to bypass steps in the planning process and residents were already responsible for cleaning up the contamination.
Cr Jason Pauling, who also voted against the plan, described the motivation of the plan as "noble, but naive".
"It's band-aid politics and we need to look to the fundamentals," he said.
"In this instance the polluter is not around anymore, but I can't for the life of me understand how we can vote in favour of a solution that perpetuates a solution where an innocent party has to pay to clean-up someone else's mess."
Cr Barney Langford said if it wasn't approved councillors might as well "throw our hands up in the air and do nothing".
He voted in favour of the plan and said it would lessen the financial burden on residents who lodged development applications and were forced to clean up their land.
In passing the plan, council agreed to continue lobbying the NSW government to assist residents with the cost of cleaning up the pollution.
The plan was passed eight votes to four.
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