Vales Point power station began operating on the shores of southern Lake Macquarie in 1963.
The current power station, Vales Point B, was commissioned in 1978.
The publicly owned power station was sold in 2015 to Sunset International Power for $1 million - a paltry sum given that two years on from the sale, the facility was valued at $722 million.
The NSW Treasurer assured the public at the time that this was to shift the contamination liability to the new owner. We now know this was untrue and the government retained the substantive liability for cleaning up the site.
The deal capped the new owner's site rehabilitation costs to just $10 million. If done properly, the rehabilitation of the Vales Point site is likely to be in excess of a billion dollars.
Sunset was even provided with a hand-back option that allowed the new owner to walk away at any time. Should the company exercise its rights under the hand back deed, the state would resume ownership of the Vales Point site.
In December last year, the value of the power station was written down to $156 million and now Sunset has decided to sell the facility to Czech family investment group Sev.en Global Investments, who has interests in two Queensland power stations.
Today, a coalition of concerned local environment groups published an open letter to the Australian Treasurer setting out our concerns and entreating Dr Chalmers to reject the sale under the foreign investment review powers of the Foreign Acquisitions and Takeovers Act 1975 and Australia's foreign investment policy.
We believe the new owners are not fit and proper people to take over the operation of critical infrastructure.
The current operators of Vales Point have a history of mismanagement, pollution, and community disdain and we are concerned that the impacts of Vales Point power station on the lake will increase under a foreign private equity firm.
Over the period Sunset International Power has owned Vales Point power station, the impacts on the lake and surrounding suburbs have increased. Significant groundwater contamination caused by the Vales Point ash dam has been identified on the opposite side of the Pacific Highway.
There have been 11 Environmental Protection Licence breaches recorded against Vales Point in the past five years, all related to water pollution and coal ash dust.
Two major fish kills near the cooling water outlet have been investigated by the EPA - the latest sparking a criminal investigation.
Seagrass in Wyee Bay has all but disappeared as a result of excessive thermal pollution.
The Lake Macquarie community and the lake itself has long suffered as a result of pollution from the Vales Point power station.
The facility is old, dirty, and poorly maintained. The expectation has been that the power station would close in 2029 and the clean-up could begin.
While workers at Vales Point may see the sale as a way of extending the life of the power station beyond its expected closure date, reports of questionable corporate governance and a lack of transparency persist.
As a private equity company, Se.ven has no traded shares, no AGMs where shareholders can question the company, and provides no annual reports and accounts.
The company has sought to change legislation to allow one of its lignite mines to demolish Horn Jietn, a town in northern Czech Republic, and has applied for exemptions from air pollution limits for its Czech power stations, so they do not have to invest in mercury reduction technologies required by European air protection regulations.
Pollution has reported to have increased substantially since Se.ven took ownership of the power stations.
The lake community and its power station workers need some certainty for their future.
In the face of a looming recession, allowing coal and wholesale electricity prices to determine when this ageing facility closes will continue to cause unnecessary anxiety.
We need responsible governments to plan for power station closures to allow communities, workers, and the environment to be protected from exploitation and mismanagement.
We need a plan for how workers will be retrained and redeployed in new industries, and for how the damage and contamination coal power has created will be remedied, when these facilities close.
Paul Winn is a researcher at Hunter Community Environment Centre
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