A man’s home and business has a market value of absolute zero because of a toxic contamination scan
Rob Roseworne has been told that his Salt Ash property, north of Newcastle in NSW, where he lives and runs a pet boarding kennel, is valued at $0 because of land and water pollution.
After decades of use of perfluorinated chemicals at a Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) base in nearby Williamtown, soil and groundwater now contain potentially toxic concentrations.
Mr Roseworne said the reason the home and 6,628m2 block was valued at nothing is because nobody would take the risk of buying a property which may be permanently polluted.
Home owners only learned of the contamination around six and a half weeks ago, Williamstown and Surrounds Residents Action Group said in a statement.
And adding insult to injury, they have been told not to drink or use bore water, or water from dams, ponds, creeks or drains, which have been found to contain ‘high concentrations’ of the chemicals which have ‘worked their way through the soil to the groundwater’.
However, some in the area are not connected to town water, and would ‘suffer compounding losses’, according to Malcom J Harrison, who valued the home.
A NSW Government Premier and Government statement added that fish, prawns and wild oysters caught in nearby waterways should not be consumed.
The property last sold for $400,000 in 2003.
