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Infrastructure giant John Holland and a contractor have agreed to pay $150,000 after delivering asbestos-laced mulch to Rozelle Parklands, sparking a 2024 crisis that saw dozens of schools, parks and hospitals closed due to contamination.
John Holland and its joint venture partner, CPB Contractors, which managed the Rozelle Parklands project in Sydney’s inner west, have entered into an “enforceable undertaking” with the NSW Environment Protection Authority.
The money will be paid to SafeWork NSW to be spent on worker training in safe handling of asbestos.
The companies were not responsible for producing the tainted mulch, which contained small fragments of potentially-dangerous asbestos, but delivered it to the site where it was used for landscaping in a park atop a motorway junction.
“While we acknowledge the joint venture did not produce the mulch, they delivered the interchange project so had a responsibility to ensure that contaminated material was not brought onto the site as part of those works,” said the EPA’s chief executive Tony Chappel.
“I’m pleased that as a result of this undertaking, more people who work with asbestos sources will receive training which will minimise the risk of such materials contaminating recycling and waste streams.”
The John Holland Group declined to comment.
The enforceable undertaking is a legally-binding agreement to resolve alleged breaches of environmental law without a court prosecution.
The case is separate from the 102 prosecutions launched by the EPA in December 2024, which seek to target the alleged source of the asbestos-ridden mulch.
Billionaire property developer and Max Brenner chocolate cafe owner Arnold Vitocco was charged with an executive liability offence linked to an alleged breach of an environmental protection licence by VE Resource Recovery, a company of which he was director.
Two entities trading as Greenlife Resource Recovery Facility – Freescale Trading Pty Ltd and Runkorp Pty Ltd – face charges for allegedly reusing asbestos waste, breaching a resource recovery order and carrying out scheduled activities without a licence.
The director of Freescale is Vitocco’s son, Domenic, and the director of Runkorp is businessman Adrian Runko. They are not facing charges.
The charges relate to 26 of the 79 sites around the state where asbestos was found to have been mingled with mulch.
Greenlife said it was fighting the charges, and the case is before the courts.
The Rozelle Parklands site was cleaned up by April 2024 and remains open.
The EPA said the mulch investigation was the largest it had ever undertaken.
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Ben Cubby is an investigative reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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