The NSW government has budgeted $41 million to clean up two heavily polluted former industrial sites in Maitland and Newcastle.
Minister for Lands and Property Steve Kamper announced on Wednesday that the two Hunter sites at Rutherford and Waratah accounted for the bulk of a $54.6 million budget allocation to remediate legacy contamination across the state.
The state will spend $19 million over the next three years to finish remediating the Truegain oil processing plant at Rutherford after a long-running Newcastle Herald investigation into the site.
The government acquired the site in 2020 and committed to cleaning it up.
"This funding is terrific news and means that we can continue working to clean up old industrial sites like Truegain that have left a blight on their communities," Mr Kamper said.
"Many of these sites were operated decades ago by companies that treated land and the environment as by-products to making a buck.
"We want to restore these places so that they are free of contamination and can be made available for community, industrial or environmental use."
Property and Development NSW has removed 11,000 tonnes of industrial wastewater, toxic oil, grease and sludge from the site and demolished and removed 135 steel containment tanks.
The government said PDNSW would develop a remedial action plan after completing investigations into the "scale of works required to make the site safe for future use".
The Truegain site was abandoned in 2016 after the company lost its trade waste permits, had its environment protection licence suspended and went into liquidation.
The NSW Environment Protection Authority took court action against Truegain director and former owner Robert Pullinger in 2021 to recover costs incurred in the clean-up.
The NSW Land and Environment Court ordered Mr Pullinger to pay the EPA more than $1.2 million.
The Newcastle Herald reported last month that PDNSW had started remediating the former Waratah Gasworks by removing 13 houses on the land.
PDNSW will allocate $22.3 million over three years from insurance funding towards the remediation work.
The multimillion-dollar project involves containing or removing contaminants including cyanide, lead and benzo(a)pyrene from the area.
The properties will be sold as vacant land on the open market when the rehabilitation program is complete.
The clean-up is due to wrap up in mid-2025.
More than 300 soil, vapour and groundwater samples were collected by an independent consultant as part of a 2017 investigation into historic pollution in the area.
In one instance, cyanide, lead, chromium, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) and benzo(a)pyrene were found above the screening criteria levels in the yard of a Turton Road property.
The former Waratah Municipal Council operated the gasworks from 1889 to 1922, when it sold it to the Newcastle Gas and Coke Company.
The plant closed in 1926.
Wallsend MP Sonia Hornery said she was "delighted that work to fix this longstanding issue has begun and there is a solution within reach for the residents impacted".
Crown Lands is also cleaning up legacy asbestos pollution on the Walka Water Works reserve at Oakhampton Heights near Maitland.
Maitland MP Jenny Aitchison said the Truegain clean-up had removed more than 9200 kilolitres of industrial wastewater and 2000 tonnes of toxic oil, grease and sludge, "the equivalent of about five Olympic swimming pools".
