Legal Threat Over Cracks

Sydney Morning Herald

Thursday November 29, 1990

By STEPHEN LONG

Birchgrove residents are planning legal action against a developer over structural damage to their homes, which they allege has been caused by vibrations from construction work on a building site.

Residents say the pounding of heavy rock-breaking and earth-moving equipment has caused cracks to appear in at least 20 homes on and around Birchgrove Road.

The State MP for Balmain, Ms Dawn Fraser, alleges that the ceiling of her home collapsed as a result of work carried out on the Howard Smith site, which faces towards Cockatoo Island at Birchgrove.

Construction Services Civil, which plans to build 54 homes on the site, has strongly denied the allegations.

The company's site project manager, Mr Steve Zackiewicz, said: "I can't see any possible way that there could be substance to the claims.

"There is no way the sort of machinery that we're using could cause that damage, and the whole site is bedded on sandstone (which would make cracking through subsidence unlikely)."

Mr Zackiewicz said an engineering firm hired by Construction Civil Services to perform a "delapidation survey" had found pre-existing cracks in some of the houses but he said the engineer had not gained access to all houses near the site.

Ms Fraser said that a structural engineer had told her that the cracks in her home were "unquestionably attributable to the vibrations set up in the bedrock as a consequence of the excavations on the opposite site".

Ms Fraser is also concerned that methane gas that has accumulated below the site could erupt in a "catastrophic breach", causing damage to homes and endangering residents' lives.

She has called for an urgent report on the matter, after recent claims by a mining engineer, Mr Alan Thilo, that a methane "gas cap" could have formed in the superstrata above the disused Balmain coal mine.

A report prepared for the developer by Unisearch said that the Balmain area was "safer than the rest of Sydney" because of work which was done to reduce the risk of a gas risk when the mine was closed. But this is disputed by Mr Thilo.

Residents have asked Leichhardt Council to impose conditions on the developer's building application restricting the scale of equipment which can be used on the site.

© 1990 Sydney Morning Herald

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