CONFIRMATION of a $5.6 million clean-up contract to take care of PFAS-containing firefighting foam stored at Truegain as well as plans for a tender to remediate the whole Rutherford site is good news, and long overdue.
The legacy, of course, left by the abandoned refinery and "recycling" plant is far greater than PFAS contamination alone.
As we reported in our long-running Dirty Deeds campaign, workers at Truegain knew the company routinely used the surrounding waterways as a dump for waste collected from Williamtown RAAF base and other airports, as well as industrial yards, service stations, mines and car washes.
It took years of complaints from nearby residents, advocacy by the member for Maitland Jenny Aitchison and investigation by the Newcastle Herald before the authorities finally took any substantial action against the plant and its operator.
In this light, the contract with Suez Recycling and Recovery is probably best viewed as a good first step, but much more work will need to be done before the site can be returned - in the words of the Environment Protection Authority - to "a condition fit for its industrial zoning".
As with all such contracts, the devil is in the fine print detail.
The NSW government has different scales of remediation, and land zoned "industrial" has a higher tolerance for contaminants than land zoned for residential development.
This is not to say that the Rutherford site is potential housing land: it is simply to recognise that a clean-up to "industrial" standard may still leave otherwise undesirable contamination in the ground.
Unfortunately, we do not have to look far afield to see what the fine print can do to an expected outcome.
In the lead-up to the March 2019 NSW election, Williamtown residents were encouraged to see a solution to some of their woes in a "Special Activation Precinct" being developed to encourage industrial development based around the RAAF's fleet of F-35 fighter jets.
Now, however, the NSW government says the amount of land needed is "much smaller than originally anticipated", leaving PFAS-impacted landowners to describe the announcement as "a cruel hoax".
The disappointment at Williamtown shows why vigilance is still needed at Rutherford.
The longer its toxic legacy remains in the environment, the harder it will be to eradicate, or at least minimise.
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