Latrobe City councillors will decide tonight whether to support the heritage-listing of Hazelwood Power Station’s eight chimney stacks.
Council officers recommended councillors vote to support the heritage listing of the stacks, however, Heritage Victoria’s executive director Steven Avery recommended last month to not include the whole power station on the Victorian Heritage Register.
In his report, Mr Avery said the power station was one of a series of power stations constructed in the Latrobe Valley under the guidance of the SECV, however, argued it was not the first to be constructed, was not the centrepiece of a major government strategy, did not demonstrate or contain new innovations and was not associated with any key developmental phases.
Officers did not support Mr Avery’s recommendation, instead arguing the eight chimney stacks should be retained due to their iconicity and their “representation of Latrobe City’s historical and social ties to the power industry”.
Council officers also recommended councillors advise Heritage Victoria, the Latrobe Valley Authority and the state and federal governments that ongoing maintenance costs of retaining the chimney stacks were “beyond the resources” of Latrobe City Council.
Heritage proponent Cheryl Wragg said she was “delighted” council officers had recommended the chimney stacks be heritage-listed, describing the power station as a “truly significant landmark in the Latrobe Valley landscape”.
“The retention of the chimneys act as a memorial of the technical achievement of Hazelwood and provide an armature for future arts-related projects such as light projections onto the chimneys and complement the Great Latrobe Park,” she said.
Ms Wragg said Hazelwood Power Station was of a “unique design” and functioned as a “bridge between the older and smaller fleet of power stations in Victoria and the supersized power stations we are more familiar [with]”.
Ms Wragg said Mr Avery’s recommendation to not include the power station on the heritage register “mostly ignored the detailed technical and historic nomination that I made”.
In an earlier statement, ENGIE said it acknowledged Heritage Victoria’s recommendation not to include the power station on the Victorian Heritage Register. On Friday ENGIE declined to comment to The Express on Latrobe City council officers’ recommendation.
ENGIE was unable to provide information on how much asbestos was in the power station by the time of publication.
Asbestos Council of Victoria/GARDS chief executive Vicki Hamilton said if the power station was to be heritage-listed and not demolished “no one would be able to guarantee the safety of the general public”.
“In the 18 years that I have been involved in ACV/GARDS, I have worked with a myriad of professionals in the asbestos arena and that knowledge holds me steadfast to the fact that you cannot safely decontaminate a power station that has had thousands of tonnes of friable asbestos used in it,” she said.
“They need to come down. Remember this is a carcinogen that takes anywhere from 15 to 50 years to affect some people – there is no minimum exposure level that is safe and there is no known cure for asbestos disease at this present time.”
