The government is finally taking action on the loose-fill Fluffy asbestos at the Ainslie shops, telling the building owner he must clean it out and soon.
The dangerous asbestos insulation remains in the ceiling of a flat above Edgar's Inn on the corner of Wakefield Gardens at the Ainslie shops. While the government says the corner pub is safe, a prohibition notice was placed on the upstairs flat more than two years ago and the government and building owner have been at an impasse since.
Building owner Jeff Darwin said the work safety authority called him to a meeting on Monday, where he was told the asbestos must be cleaned out and the job was his responsibility.
He was told Worksafe would assess the extent of contamination first, checking how far it had migrated down the walls from the upstairs ceiling, and whether the walls behind the ground floor were impacted.
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Mr Darwin was handing keys to the government on Monday so that work could begin.
Once the extent of contamination was known, he would have the asbestos cleaned out, and he had been told it would then be given a clean bill of health.
The solution is at odds with the government's insistence in 2014 that it was not possible to make the 1022 Fluffy-contaminated houses in Canberra safe and they must all be demolished. Unlike the houses, which were cleaned out in a failed Commonwealth program between about 1988 and 1992, the Ainslie shops building was never cleaned and the asbestos insulation remains in place.
Mr Darwin said he was told this week that demolition was not an option. Officials had not explained why but he assumed it was because it was a heritage-listed building and demolition would cause too much disruption.
"He was quite emphatic that demolition was not an option that it needed to be removed," Mr Darwin said of the Worksafe official with whom he met. "There are better techniques in place now I gather than what there were in the 1990s when removal wasn't fully successful."
Mr Darwin said he was concerned about the cost of remediation, but was keen to get the work done as he was losing at least $30,000 a year in rent since the prohibition notice.
"The hope is that the asbestos won't have made its way down the wall into the walls of Edgar's and if that is the case then Edgar's will be unimpacted and the only impact will be on the flat upstairs which is currently vacant," he said.
Mr Darwin also owns the neighbouring building on Wakefield Gardens, which houses a hairdresser, Pulp Kitchen and other tenants, but he said the two buildings were not connected and only the corner building contained the Fluffy asbestos.
He bought it in 1992 when the insulation was already installed. He discovered the asbestos when a builder assessed the flat for renovations in 1995. No-one had been in the roof space since. Tenants had been told, the presence of the asbestos had been written into the lease, and signs had prohibited access to the ceiling. When he had electrical work done, the wires were installed externally, rather than in the ceiling space.
"I've haven't tried to conceal this, I've always been upfront with all of my tenants, I've complied to the best of my abilities to all requirements keeping health and safety issues in mind," he said.
He was not happy at having to pay for the entire clean-up, but accepted that "as the building owner, the buck stops here".
"In one sense I am relieved that there is an end in sight but I still feel that I've been harshly done by by the federal government and the ACT government because it's through no fault of my own that asbestos had been installed," he said.
Mr Darwin said given the clean-up of the Fluffy homes had since been judged inadequate, with asbestos fibres remaining in walls and subfloors, he had asked officials on Monday whether he would find himself in the same situation as the homeowners in 20 years' time.
But he had been told that technology and techniques had changed since the houses were cleaned 25 years ago, and "they will guarantee it's all gone".
Edgars owner Frank Condi said he was pleased to have the asbestos removed safely and finally "get some closure". He was interested in looking at the upstairs space for an extension of his business.