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Bid to hide East Perth pollution

Flagship development: Claisebrook Cove in East Perth. Picture: Mogens Johansen/The West Australian

The Metropolitan Redevelopment Authority tried to bury damaging evidence about pollution near its flagship Claisebrook Cove development in East Perth.

Previously secret documents reveal it demanded the Swan River Trust drop references to contaminated groundwater at Mardalup Park next to multimillion-dollar East Perth homes.

When the trust refused, the MRA spent thousands of taxpayer dollars on its own report in a bid to refute the findings.

The revelations are in scores of emails between the MRA and the trust The Weekend West obtained under Freedom of Information laws.

They show that in March last year the trust was about to release two reports into pollution at East Perth and the MRA tried to hose down or have damaging references removed.

The reports by the trust and Department of Water found some “non-nutrient” contamination was much worse than expected.

One area of particular concern was next to Mardalup Park — the site of the old East Perth gasworks and one of Perth’s most polluted sites.

Contaminants included heavy metals and hydrocarbons.

The trust’s draft said the pollution was likely to be “residual contamination”, contaminated groundwater from Mardalup Park or a combination of both.

The conclusion based on trust reports found safeguards such as clay put over Mardalup Park during remediation in the 1990s might have failed and led to a polluted aquifer leaking into the Swan.

In response, the MRA asked that any suggestion Mardalup Park’s groundwater contributed to the pollution be removed.

“There is no evidence to suggest that,” the MRA said on March 25 last year.

“The response relating to where the contaminants are coming from will not be changed as it … can be justified by evidence,” the SRT replied.
The trust declined to change its report so the MRA commissioned one that cleared Mardalup Park.