Land
Page 301
Land and Soil
Introduction
The Port Adelaide Enfield Council area is a highly urbanised area with much of
the land form having been significantly altered and engineered during 150 years
of intense development. The value of ensuring healthy soils in this area is
therefore not primarily in relation to supporting soil productivity or horticultural
potential, but ensuring that the land is able to support a healthy urban,
commercial, and populated residential environment – and be suitable for the
types of land use activities that occur in the area.
Given the long history of industrial and urban development in the area, it will be
an ongoing challenge to ensure that the quality of the soil is not posing a threat
to valuable groundwater resources, waterways, ecosystems, or human health.
Soil contamination in an urban area is usually associated with past land uses
involving the on-site disposal or burial of general waste chemicals, building
materials, or fuels. It can also occur via accidental spillage, leakage,
inadequately managed storage or transportation of materials, atmospheric
fallout, the spreading of sewage sludge, the use of contaminated materials for
filling and raising of land, use of pesticides, or movement of contamination to a
site from a neighbouring site, usually through the movement of surface or
groundwater.
Direct contamination of groundwater or other water resources can also occur,
rendering the water unfit to use, and potentially harming plants, animals and
human health.
The activities or land uses that are deemed by the State agencies to have the
potential
to cause land or groundwater contamination if not adequately
managed, include dry cleaning premises, power stations, galvanisers, chemical
manufacturers, railway yards, service stations, landfill sites, farming, smelting
and refining, and foundries (Planning SA, 2001).
The remediation (clean-up) of past soil contamination has occurred at many
sites around the City of Port Adelaide Enfield, and will continue to be an
important focus of environmental improvement projects for many years to come
due to the legacy of past land management practices when the issues of soil
contamination were not well understood or regulated.
