Clean up bill for toxic Camellia light rail yard doubles to $116m
Taxpayers will fork out $116 million to clean up a heavily contaminated site near Parramatta for the NSW government’s light rail project, more than double the original bill. This comes after a reversal of earlier government plans to get the existing landowner to pay to clean up the site.
The escalating bill means the government has had to spend almost $170 million to get the land to a stage where the transport agency can start building a maintenance yard for trams at Camellia by midyear. The trams will run on the first stage of Parramatta’s multibillion-dollar light rail line when it opens in 2023.
The property next to Rosehill Racecourse has been described by an environmental expert as a “cocktail of highly toxic chemicals” including asbestos and hexavalent chromium, a carcinogen used in the manufacture of chrome at the site.