A
Cleaner Arena Sydney's Olympics will be the most environmentally
friendly ever, but not everyone is satisfied
By LISA CLAUSEN Homebush
At first glance
they don't look like much more than good spots for a picnic: five gently sloping
mounds dotted around the main Olympic site at Homebush Bay. Covered with grass
and huge--one of them, Kronos Hill, is 25 m high and covers 30 hectares--they
give striking views across the venues that, in less than a month, will host
thousands of athletes and up to 600,000 spectators a day. But these man-made
hills weren't created for sightseeing or picnics. Beneath the landscaping and
a meter of clay, they're made of landfill, 9 million cu. m of waste scraped
up from across the site, which throughout the 1960s and '70s was an unregulated
dumping ground for everything from pesticides and petrochemicals to tar and
asbestos. At the base of the mounds are drains to catch leachate--water that
passes through contaminated soil--and stop it reaching groundwater and nearby
creeks. On average, 140,000 liters of leachate are collected each day and sent
to the neighboring Lidcombe Liquid Waste Treatment Plant for processing. "Every
time I look at those mounds," says Kate Hughes, director of the Olympic Coordination
Authority's Ecology Programs, "I think, 'That's the 20th century for you.'"
Reminders
of the site's noxious past are everywhere at Homebush: in the mounds, in the
adjacent wetlands--slowly recovering after being scoured of about 750,000 cu.
m of waste, enough to fill 250 Olympic-sized pools--and in the nearby Homebush
Bay waterway, which is heavily contaminated with dioxins. That history ensured
a high profile for environmental issues from the moment in 1993 when Sydney
won the contest to host the Games with Homebush as the main venue. To give their
bid an extra edge, organizers promised that Sydney's Games would be a model
of environmental responsibility and presented a 25-page list of guidelines for
achieving that goal. With the Olympics at hand, now is Sydney's time of reckoning.
How green will the Games be?
Not green
enough, say many of the environmentalists who have followed the preparations.
"Some amazing environmental successes [but] a number of key opportunities missed,"
was Greenpeace's final assessment, in mid-August. These Games will be largely
car-free--spectators will have to catch public transport to the venues--but most
of the drinks they buy will be stored in regular refrigerators, which use ozone-depleting
fluorocarbons. Visitors will use only biodegradable cutlery--made of cornstarch-based
plastic--and recyclable plastic cups, but in most venues they'll be kept cool
by fluorocarbon-based air-conditioning systems. At Homebush, they'll walk around
at night under 19 solar-powered light towers, but if they want an ice-cream
while they wander, it will probably come in a non-recyclable foil wrapper. All
in all, says Jeff Angel, director of New South Wales' Total Environment Centre,
"it's a semi-green Games--good in parts and not so good in others."
Organizers
are "proud of the result," says Michael Bland, head of environmental communications
for the Games and a former Greenpeace employee. "We've got a good story to tell."
In many areas, environmental activists agree. They have praised the athletes'
village, with solar panels on 665 homes, recycled-water systems and minimal
PVC use. Of some 10,000 tons of garbage expected to be generated during the
Games, organizers aim to recycle or compost 80%. And the consumption of potable
water will be halved thanks to a new recycling scheme.
But in other
areas, say green groups, Games organizers and sponsors haven't tried hard enough.
The environmental guidelines, which cover such goals as energy and water conservation,
aren't binding, and the use of ozone-depleting coolants and petrol-fueled official
cars directly contravenes them. Bob Symington, head of the government-funded
Green Games Watch 2000, accuses Games organizers of being unduly secretive--a
charge they reject--and reluctant to justify decisions that flouted the guidelines:
"Their view was that [the environmental issue] was a hurdle they had to jump
over."
The biggest
job organizers faced was the cleanup of the land itself. In all, almost $80
million was spent on improving the 760-ha site, of which 160 ha were deemed
contaminated. Workers wore protective clothing during on-site testing. Deadly
dioxins, byproducts of PVC production and incineration, were found buried deep
underground. The worst of the waste--around 400 tons, reduced to 16,000 liters
of toxic concentrate--is now being rendered harmless at a plant behind one of
the mounds. Though it won't be completed in time for the Games, the non-incinerating
heat and chemical treatment has so far been a success--and has won the approval
of environmentalists.
They're less
supportive of plans to store most of the site's waste in the mounds indefinitely.
That approach is a "superficial solution," says University of Wollongong science
and society professor Sharon Beder. "It's inadequate long term. You'll get leakage;
maybe it's already leaking into the groundwater. All they've done is reduce
the risk to people on site." But the OCA's Kate Hughes, a toxics campaigner
for 20 years and co-author of the Games' original green guidelines, says the
mounds are among Australia's "most well-managed remediated sites." Bland agrees
that the best available methods of storage and remediation were used. "There
has to be a very strong distinction," he adds, "between where people are going
to live and where they play sport. And people don't play sport for more than
a few hours a day."
Greenpeace
toxics campaigner Mark Oakwood isn't convinced. "What its fate will be in five,
10 or 20 years when the funding dries up and the leachate starts to shift and
the pipes break down--what happens then hasn't been determined," he says. Hughes
says the government will establish a special body to manage the site and oversee
a regular monitoring regime, testing the mounds every three months and the leachate
every six months. Her team is setting up a protocol for monitoring the local
environment, though she confirms there will be no routine checks on whether
leachate is seeping into groundwater. "There's got to be an end to where you
test," Hughes says, "and a leap of faith that ... the mounds and the leachate
system are robust." Ravi Naidu, a specialist in contaminated environments remediation
at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, is impressed,
though he thinks groundwater should be tested. "Unless you monitor [the containment
system] for a sustained period," he says, "you don't know if it will work as
you think it will."
The chief
blemish on the Games' green credentials, say environmentalists, is Homebush
Bay, next to the Olympic site. The fate of the waterway--one of Australia's most
polluted areas--and a nearby site formerly owned by chemicals giant Union Carbide,
has been widely debated in recent years. The state government failed to clean
them up in time for the Games, but last week it announced that a $50 million
project to remediate some 500,000 cu. m of soil and 3 ha of the bay, and develop
the site, will start in 2001. So poisoned by chemicals that fishing in the bay
is banned, the area will take years to fix. But Transport Minister Carl Scully
says it will eventually be safe enough to become a new suburb: "This is an opportunity
to clean and renew. It is a legacy for the future of Sydney."
And what will
be the legacy of the "green Games"? Some environmentalists think it will be
positive: promoting environmentally sound building practices, solar power, recycling,
and new techniques for treating hazardous waste. Others, like the University
of Wollongong's Beder, fear that would-be Olympic host cities will see "greenness"
less as a commitment to the environment than as a way to sugar-coat their bids.
Sydney's Games, and the International Olympic Committee's choice of environmentalism
as its third pillar, alongside sport and culture, have put the spotlight on
green issues. Whether that illumination lasts will be for future Games organizers
to decide.
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