The History Behind Wittenoom:
The Largest Contaminated
Site in the
Southern Hemisphere.
History of Wittenoom
1937- 1966 | Asbestos Mining
From 1937 until 1966, successive asbestos minersiii dumped more than three-million tonnes of mine waste - known as ‘tailings’ - laced with deadly blue asbestos in the Wittenoom area.
For the past 30 years, successive government inquiries recommended the clean-up of Wittenoom and even labelled the contamination ‘environmental vandalism’ of one of the most scenic areas of the State.
Instead of fixing the contamination of our Country, in 2008 the Western Australian government declared the Wittenoom Asbestos Management Area (WAMA) - a 46,840-hectare exclusion area that is unsafe to access and unfit for human habitation. It’s a sacrifice zone more than half the size of Singapore on Banjima’s Native Title lands.
2015 | Government Reports
In 2015, the government commissioned the engineering firm GHD to estimate the cost of remediating the site by encapsulation. It came up with figures of approximately $150 million.
According to FOI documents from 2016, no action has been taken to secure the tailings in Wittenoom Gorge not because it isn’t possible, but due to cost. This is despite mining royalties of an estimated $12.7 billion being paid to the Western Australian government last year. This is not acceptable to Banjima.
There are precedents for clean-ups of toxic sites in Australia. These include the toxic Fiskville firefighting site in 2022 with clean-up bill of AUD 80 million. The Mr Fluffy asbestos clean-up in Canberra in 2014 cost over AUD $1bn.
2022 | The demolition of Wittenoom town
In 2022, the last remaining residents of Wittenoom town were evicted ahead of its demolition in 2023. The W.A. Government declared this was “an end to a dark period in our State's history.” This statement belies the ongoing harm that is being inflicted on Banjima. Burying the town may deter the thrill-seekers that flocked to the town in ghoulish disaster tourism, but the major source of asbestos contamination - the tailings dumps - remain.
Now in an unacceptable risk to all communities, the contamination has spread outside the exclusion zone.
