A group of Geographe residents, angered by dust blowing on their properties from a nearby development, are considering their legal options against the company responsible.
A meeting between Aigle Royal Developments, APH Contractors and residents was held on February 23 at the request of the concerned residents.
One of those residents, Peter Clifford, described the meeting as ‘superficial’ and said it achieved nothing.
“They just don’t seem to have a care factor for us residents,” he said.
“I felt there was quite a lot of ducking and weaving.
“There has been no communication from anybody since and I can say a group of residents have sought advice from solicitors.”
Aigle Royal Developments senior project manager Jim Karakatsanakis said the meeting was well balanced and with the completion of works only four weeks away, the main focus was to stabilise the site and reduce the amount of dust leaving the stockpiles.
He said since the meeting, the company had increased the use of dust suppression materials including soil crusting agents, erected additional dust mesh fencing and increased water cart usage.
“The challenging site conditions prevents 100 per cent dust free works from being achievable, however the existing and new measures will improve the situation and minimise the dust leaving our site as much as possible,” he said.
“I am satisfied the Aigle Royal and APH response is above and beyond what is considered best practice and there is nothing obvious that we aren’t already doing.”
He said at completion of works, APH and Aigle Royal would assist residents with any cleaning works that may be required. Mr Clifford acknowledged the recent efforts to reduce the dust, but was dissatisfied with the response from Aigle Royal on the matter.
“They are having a crack and doing some things but the bottom line is until now, Aigle Royal have done very little and it has been a case of the squeaky wheel gets the oil. Many people don’t even know that cleaning could have been done already, so it is a dead set failure for those people.”