From her top-floor apartment overlooking Victoria Park, Liz Hall has a front-row seat to the caged off construction site that is set to become the jewel of the Brisbane 2032 Olympic Games.
Once a vibrant green parkland, the view has become nothing but dirt and dust in its current early works.
But one day in September, the 63-year-old spotted something yellow. It was an unusually long strip of tape cordoning off a large section of the site which read: “DANGER ASBESTOS DUST HAZARD”.
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Riddled with the anxiety she may be breathing something toxic, Ms Hall masked up and turned on an air filter inside her home.
For weeks it loomed over her.
“What am I breathing in?,” the worried resident, who also has health concerns and has had a mastectomy, told news.com.au.
Community residents know Victoria Park by its traditional name, ‘Barrambin’, which literally translates to “windy place” in the Indigenous Turrbal language, and many are worried big gusts of wind could be picking up contaminants and spreading them to nearby homes.
Save Victoria Park (SVP), a community advocacy group established to protect the park from development, first publicly raised alarm bells about asbestos in August, after a community member identified a large mound covered in a white tarp marked with asbestos signage.
Victoria Park is located in a populated residential area, surrounded by five large schools where thousands of school children attend, two university campuses and the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital.
The Games independent Infrastructure and Coordination Authority (GIICA), who provide monthly construction updates, had not provided any information of the discovery of asbestos at the time.
However, in their mid-September update, under the title: ‘The history of Victoria Park’ “contaminated materials” were mentioned.
“Contaminated materials were confirmed to be located throughout the area,” the update said.
“When contaminated materials are encountered, appropriate management procedures and relevant regulatory requirements will be followed to ensure the safety of our workers and the public.”
Yet information regarding what type of contaminated material was found, whether the asbestos posed a risk to the community, and the specific monitoring measures and controls throughout site activities was not publicly revealed.
To date, GIICA have not formally addressed the public in a stand alone notification of the contaminated materials, nor have they specifically titled the contaminated materials as asbestos.
Community members are only aware of the asbestos after spotting the signs found on site or viewing images online, Ms Hall said.
“To live near the site, and see asbestos tape, it just plays on your mind,” she said.
“If you see something and no one tells you what is going on, that is what is causing anxiety, when it is around for a long time and they’re saying nothing.”
The protection laws for the heritage listed site have been set aside, following the passing of a special legislation giving GIICA the power to override 15 planning laws, fast tracking the Brisbane 2032 Olympic stadium.
Families, hospital workers, patients, school and university students walk or cycle right past the park every day.
Local resident Sandy Rodgers said she has been breathing the dust blown off the construction site at her home near Victoria Park.
“My neighbours, who park on the street, say they clean it off their cars and can smell it in their washing,” she said.
“The entire suburb and all the way to Toowoong has a pool of dusty air. And so, that’s a broad community concern: What are we breathing in?”.
News.com.au contacted GIICA, who said given Victoria Park has been a “dump, a military base and affordable housing quarter among many other uses over the past 150 years” and it would be “expected” to find contaminated materials.
“Finding contaminants while works are underway is to be expected and all environmental and safety processes are being followed,” a spokesperson from GIICA said.
“Any risks to neighbouring residents, the public and workers have been mitigated and work on delivering the 63,000 seat Brisbane Stadium for the 2032 Games and beyond is continuing,”.
This publication is not suggesting GIICA and their contractors have mishandled the asbestos found on the site.
For Ms Rodgers, the promise of full transparency from the Queensland government and GIICA regarding the construction of the Brisbane stadium is one she thought they would take seriously.
“That’s all that we’d like to know: Are you testing for everything before you blanket a whole suburb?”.
“It’s Kelvin Grove, Red Hill, and Paddington. We’re all getting a bit of this dust and if you live near the site, a lot of this dust. So we’d like to know what they are exposing us to”.
“And they’re behaving as though we don’t matter, as though it doesn’t matter what they’re exposing us to and we have no right to ask. That’s the way it’s being treated.”
Ms Rodgers recalled when Brisbane’s Legacy Way tunnel was built under her home, and said the public funded project dealt with the public in a reasonable manner.
“We were informed – there was air quality testing, there was acoustic testing, there was all sorts of testing, and those results were shared with us”.
“Is this acceptable for a big public project for them to just have no transparency? This government was elected on a platform of transparency and here they are not even informing us of what they’re finding on site”.
Both Ms Rodgers and Ms Hall reached out to authorities such as Workplace Health and Safety Queensland (WHSQ), GIICA and Aztech, the company managing the asbestos, to find out information regarding the contaminated materials.
SVP has lodged a formal complaint with GIICA about asbestos safety concerns at the construction site.
GIICA received the complaint, but the community group said the questions went unanswered and the complaint was closed.
SVP are taking the complaint to the Queensland Ombudsman, seeking an external review into the decision handling process.
SVP president Sue Bremner said the discovery of asbestos at Victoria Park has pushed some residents to look into their own independent dust testing, “just to get some information”.
“This is expensive, but they feel like there’s no other option to get peace of mind that their home and work environments are safe,” she said.
“All of this could be avoided with honest and open communication from GIICA and the government”.
“Many residents have written to GIICA to get clarity about what contaminants have been discovered and what types of mitigation strategies are in place”.
Documents obtained by news.com.au show GIICA responded to the complainants by reassuring community members the contaminated materials were being handled correctly, including air monitoring controls in place where necessary.
News.com.au asked GIICA to identify the company responsible for air monitoring at the site and was directed to BMD. However, when contacted, BMD referred news.com.au back to GIICA. To date, news.com.au has been unable to confirm which company was engaged to undertake air monitoring.
‘Good practice’: Asbestos expert
Michael Shepherd, from the committee of the Demolishing and Asbestos Industry Association, the peak industry body in Queensland representing asbestos removal operators, said given the “sensitivity” of this project it would be “good practice” to notify local community members and those who have visibility of the project.
“It is good practice, especially on sensitive sites that are open to public scrutiny to verify that the controls that you have in place are effective,” he said.
“Nine times out of ten air-monitoring would be deployed, and those results should be available to anybody that wants to see them and you should be able to get that information quite readily because there’s no point doing air monitoring and then hiding them away in a file so nobody can see”.
The licensed asbestos assessor said there is “a lot” of anxiety associated with asbestos in the community, and to alleviate some of that, projects should have open communication with concerned neighbours.
“It is professional and good practice to be courteous and have some sort of portal or information sharing, so people can access this information if they want,” Mr Shepherd said.
Ms Bremmer believes GIICA should be more transparent and upfront with the local community to gain their trust, labelling the answers to their concerns as “vague reassurances”.
“Residents want details of what exactly has been found at the park,” she said.
“They want to see air-monitoring established around the perimeter of the park to find out whether dust suppression strategies are working. They want to see the results of any monitoring.”
Local resident, Jen Tyrkalo believes detailed information about the contaminated materials is the least the community could expect from a government funded project.
Having recently battled cancer, the 42-year-old from the suburb of Kelvin Grove, a quick five minute walk from the park, attends a section of the open parkland with “caution”.
She said she tries not to go on windy days after seeing photos of sectioned areas with asbestos tape.
“I’m cautious of going there,” she told news.com.au.
“My lungs can get easily inflamed and I am concerned if there are things in the dust from the asbestos.
“Even if they said to us right now that there is nothing to worry about, it is hard to trust that answer.
“They are not showing any independent studies or any report, or any details on what they are doing. I don’t think it’s right that we would be having such a big project, and have so much secrecy.”
A spokesperson from WHSQ told news.com.au it investigated the Victoria Park construction site.
“WHSQ responded to a complaint relating to asbestos at a worksite at Victoria Park, and no breaches of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 or Work Health and Safety Regulation 2011 were identified relating to the management of asbestos on the site,” they said.
The Queensland State Development Infrastructure and Planning told news.com.au this was not a matter they can comment on.
BMD did not comment.
Community groups Brisbane Residents United and Spring Hill Community Group have called for an immediate work stoppage until full environment and health safety compliance is independently verified and publication of all unredacted reports including the hazardous materials register.
They also want to see public deployment of 24/7 continuous airborne asbestos fiber and dust monitoring stations around the precinct perimeter.