The Sydney Tar Ponds And Surroundings

Figure 1. Sydney Tar Ponds and Surrounding area (adopted from Barlow and May 2000). The soil and dust sampling took place in the coloured area of the three communities, North End in yellow, Ashby in blue and Whitney Pier in orange and red. In Whitney Pier, an area called north of the coke ovens (NOCO), red with bold streets has been partitioned off from Whitney Pier as a whole. This study tested the assumption that NOCO is different than Ashby and North End with respect to soil and house dust levels of lead and arsenic.

Legend:

  1. The south tar pond.
  2. The north tar pond. The tar ponds are reported to contain 700,000 tons of coal tar of which 50,000 tons are contaminated with PCBs, however, the amount of coal tar may greatly exceed this estimate (Furimsky 2002).
  3. The original water line that intersects the steel plant site; the in-fill material is predominantly slag piles.
  4. The hazardous waste incinerator built in 1992 to burn the coal tar waste in the tar ponds.
  5. The Whitney Pier Memorial Junior High School is situated approximately 600 metres up hill from waste incinerator.
  6. The NOCO area of Whitney Pier is red and the specific streets are bold. The entire shaded area of Whitney Pier was sampled.
  7. The coke ovens site where 400 coke ovens processed coke for the steel mill.
  8. Ashby sampling area in light blue.
  9. The Don Bosco school.
  10. North End sampling area in yellow.