A SECOND Albury property has tested positive for loose-fill asbestos while Culcairn has recorded its first confirmed result under the present state scheme.
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Thirty Greater Hume properties are now known to contain the dangerous material, with the Culcairn home the first of those outside Holbrook.
A NSW Fair Trading spokesman said testing in Albury and Greater Hume was expected to finish before December, but demolition schedules in the voluntary purchase and demolition program were yet to be finalised.
Information released this week showed 1485 Albury tests out of 4751 registrations had been completed, with 416 not proceeding.
The spokesman said this referred to properties withdrawn by their owners, not meeting the criteria and duplicate registrations.
“There has been no significant delay to the program as a result of these registrations,” he said.
In Greater Hume 525 out of 1748 tests are completed and 94 haven’t proceeded.
Greater Hume general manager Steven Pinnuck said the rate of positive tests had slowed although the number remained a concern.
The Culcairn confirmation had been a more recent result.
“We always felt that there were possibilities that there were impacted properties elsewhere in the shire,” Mr Pinnuck said.
“Obviously the number is going to go higher, but how high that will be, it’s difficult to predict.”
With Holbrook, which has the second largest number of instances in NSW, identified as a hot spot, extra resources had attempted to speed up the level of testing.
“Which is a good thing because at the end of the day I think most people just want to know whether their property is impacted or not so that they can start planning where they go to from there,” the general manager said.
The monthly support group meetings for affected residents had discussed the need to store people’s possessions if they rebuilt.
“We’re trying to work with them at the moment to come up with some solutions around shipping containers and the like,” Mr Pinnuck said. “It would appear that we’re still some months away from any demolitions happening.”