By Ewen McRae
The Bacchus Marsh community will take to the streets this week, with concerns over contaminated soil continuing to rise.
A rally has been organised for March 10 at the Village Green to protest a proposal from Maddingley Brown Coal (MBC) to store and process contaminated soil from the West gate Tunnel Project.
It follows a similar march in Werribee last week, during which hundreds of residents protested plans to store contaminated soil at a Wyndham Vale stabling yard.
The rally has been organised by the Bacchus Marsh Community Coalition, and group member Kat Barlow said they would not be silenced.
“We need to be screaming from the rooftops,“ Ms Barlow said. “It’s absolutely beyond preposterous what they have planned.
“We will have speakers, and we want our voices heard.
“It’s going to be a noisier display of our absolute horror of what we’re told is going to happen.”
Maddingley Brown Coal and Transurban released a series of responses to questions from Moorabool council last week, stating the level of contamination in the soil was likely to be low.
However Ms Barlow said the responses did little to allay concerns in the community.
“We’re an educated community that knows all too well the impact of PFAS, and we’re being patted on the head,” Ms Barlow said.
“If the soil is contaminated enough to stop them digging, and they have everyone on site wearing hazmat suits, it can’t possibly be the low levels they’re describing.
“If I was Transurban or the EPA, and there were low level results in the soil, I would be parading them on every newspaper available to placate a community. The fact is they don’t have that, all they have is expected levels
“[Premier] Dan Andrews’ silence means he is complicit in the destruction of an entire community … how can they sit back and know the effects of PFAS, and still damn our community to that life?
“We don’t want this to go to Wyndham either, and we’re all in this together and working together to ensure this soil doesn’t go anywhere near a community and destroy a community.”
