Mr Piper recently visited Bunker Hill, an area in the United States which suffered from decades of pollution from a lead and zinc smelter.

He said a legacy fund of some form was needed to manage Lake Macquarie’s lead problem into the future.

“I’ve always felt we needed a long-term strategy and I think that’s what we probably failed to do,” he said.

“Whether the LAS [Lead Abatement Strategy] that was implemented was good or bad, and certainly it’s probably somewhere in the middle of that, we need to have oversight of the lead that’s there in perpetuity.”

The Lead Abatement Strategy was a controversial state-sanctioned program to “cap and cover” contaminants in north Lake Macquarie, rather than remove them.

Mr Piper said one of the best things he found in Bunker Hill was “the Institutional Controls Program”.

“It puts an obligation on everybody that if you want to dig around in your yard, you can’t just go and do it.”

A control program was needed, otherwise contaminants would be “brought back to the surface by people doing work and knowingly or inadvertently recontaminating the local area”.

“Bottom line is we need to be able to keep it away from where it can find a pathway into people, particularly children,” he said. 

He said a control program would record the location of contaminated material and ensure “that lead in the community is tracked forever”.

A legacy fund would be needed to cover the cost.

The Boolaroo community had called for a site to dispose of contaminated material.

“There should be a local repository and it shouldn’t be an expensive thing,” Mr Piper said.

Asked if state-funded removal of any contamination was on the table, Mr Piper said: “That’ll be up to the [EPA-appointed] Lead Expert Working Group”.

“The reality is, for most locations, it’s probably better off being capped, covered and maintained,” he said.