New home for environmental research
by Michèle Nardelli
Senator for South Australia, Anne McEwen officially opened UniSA’s state-of-the-art Environmental Sciences building at the Mawson Lakes campus in August.
The $20 million building is the Australasian hub for research into environmental risk assessment and remediation, a problem with clean-up costs estimated at $5-8 billion in Australia alone. The building houses UniSA’s Centre for Environmental Risk Assessment and Remediation (CERAR) as well as the headquarters for the national Cooperative Research Centre for Contamination Assessment and Remediation of the Environment (CRC CARE).
UniSA Vice Chancellor, Professor Peter Høj, said the building offers our leading researchers a physical focus for high level research, innovation and education for some of the most challenging aspects of environmental health.
"When you take a broad look at the data, the importance of this research facility is very clear," Prof Høj said.
"Australia has more than 100,000 contaminated sites and in Asia there are an estimated five million more. Contamination affects drinking water, crop quality and food production and the safety of the very land we live on.
"This century we are all squarely focused on the health of the planet and that in part will depend on how we clean up after ourselves, how we remediate the damage that has already been done and minimise future degradation and contamination of our environment."
He said the new facilities provided a one-stop-shop for industry and regulators to discuss and identify priority research needs and technology transfer.