UBIQUITOUS SILICA DOES NOT STOP SAND PIT PLANNING PERMIT

On the 25th June there was a VCAT hearing in Horsham in relation to an appeal lodged by an objector against a determination made by Horsham Rural City Council to issue a planning permit to K & J Baker Cartage Pty Ltd (a CMPA member) for removal of sand from a site situated at St Helens Road, St Helens Plains, near Horsham.  The site adjoins an existing sand removal site operated by K & J Baker Cartage Pty Ltd, and is in an area zoned rural.

There were a number of grounds of objection, including fairly normal issues such as noise, damage to the servicing road, fire risk, visual impact, and the general effect on the amenity of the area.  However most significant was the suggestion of risks to the health of the objector and his family, in particular the risk of silicosis and possibly lung cancer.  It was also suggested that the supply of water to tanks would be affected by silica.

K & J Baker Cartage Pty Ltd was represented in this matter by Nevett Ford Lawyers. Mark Wagner provided some background assistance, and Nevett Ford engaged Andrew Stewart of Kilpatrick & Associates to provide expert evidence on the silica issue.

The major problem was the lack of information and understanding of the real issues so far as silica is concerned.  The Council, in a genuine attempt to meet the objector’s concerns, had specified a number of planning permit conditions in its determination.  Apart from addressing the issues of road maintenance, hours of operation, etc, the permit conditions required the sand from the site to be tested for silica levels.  However after a meeting between Andrew Stewart, Andrew Lumb from Nevett Ford, and the Council’s General Manager of Planning, the Council recognised the need for the planning permit conditions to be redrafted to focus more appropriately on the silica issue.

Kilpatrick & Associates carried out a qualitative assessment based on the current sand extraction operation and on tests of the sand from the proposed site across the road.  Andrew Stewart provided an expert report for the hearing and attended the hearing to comment on the report and to be questioned.  In very simplistic terms Andrew Stewart’s report was to the following effect.  (It should be borne in mind that this is a lay version of the expert technical report and does not purport to be totally technically correct.)

1. A report of the International Agency for Research on Cancer suggests a link between respirable silica and lung cancer, but there are some reservations about this conclusion because of the inability to eliminate other factors such as smoking.
2. The report suggests that persons suffering from silicosis have a higher propensity to lung cancer.
3. Risk of silicosis is related to respirable silica which is essentially silica of 10 microns or less.
4. Respirable silica is normally associated with crushing operations, where even if the quantity of silica in the stone is low, the crushing operation may produce silica at a respirable level.
5. The profile of particle size of silica typically involved in sand extraction operations normally involves a very low content of silica which could be respirable.
6. There is no known research to suggest that silica is an environmental issue, as against a workplace issue, i.e. it has not been possible to locate any credible basis for suggesting that silica represents a health danger other than for people in a workplace generating respirable silica.
7. There is currently a proposal to reduce the current Australian occupational exposure standard from 0.2 mg/m3, to 0.1 mg/m3 but it is understood that this represents something less than the apparent halving of the current standard, as the testing methodology has changed.  The occupational exposure standard is a time weighted average concentration based on an eight hour working day, five day working week, over an entire working life. Exposure below the level of the standard is considered to involve no danger of impairment to health or undue discomfort.
8. The methodology of testing other than in the direct occupational context raises various issues.  Silica is ubiquitous and may have a number of origins.  To test on the boundary of a site for airborne silica levels reveals only at that particular geographical point a particular level existed at the time.  The possibility of a variety of sources may exist, particularly in rural areas where there may be ploughed paddocks, dusty roads, etc.  Essentially the issue is a workplace issue and there is no real basis for other testing.
9. A particle size analysis of sand taken by Kilpatrick & Associates from the proposed K & J Baker Cartage site indicated that the sand had a typical profile and contained only a very small proportion of particles below 50 micron.  As such the site was assessed by Kilpatrick & Associates as unlikely to pose a risk of generating respirable silica levels exceeding the occupational exposure standard.

VCAT accepted Andrew Stewart’s report and evidence, and indicated that a planning permit would be issued to K & J Baker Cartage but probably after some tweaking of the permit conditions.  It is anticipated that K & J Baker Cartage will probably be required to carry out some occupational testing in dry summer conditions, presumably on the basis that if the occupational exposure level is not exceeded and it is entirely safe for workers on the site, it is difficult to see how anyone living three hundred metres away could be adversely affected.  The written reasons for the VCAT decision and the amended permit conditions have not yet been received.

Further information from Andrew Stewart of Kilpatricks will be available in the November newsletter.

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