East Perth Gas Works was built in 1922 for the Perth City Council to produce

town gas Coal gas is a flammable gaseous fuel made from coal and supplied to the user via a piped distribution system. It is produced when coal is heated strongly in the absence of air. Town gas is a more general term referring to manufactured gaseous ...

from

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when ...

, supplying the city of

Perth Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth i ...

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

. It could initially supply of gas per day. It was built on the site of the earlier 1886

Perth Gas Company Perth Gas Company was a gas producer in Perth, Western Australia. It had plant in East Perth that was constructed in 1886, and superseded by new operators and plant in 1922. The company conducted a range of improvements and modifications to its ...

plant. The works was situated on the north bank of

Claise Brook Claise Brook is a stream which empties into Claisebrook Cove before running into the Swan River in Perth, Western Australia. The area surrounding the stream is on the outskirts of the Perth CBD and is part of the suburb of East Perth. Claise ...

and operated until its decommissioning in 1971. It was dismantled over a number of years, and the landmark 20-sided

gasometer A gas holder or gasholder, also known as a gasometer, is a large container in which natural gas or town gas is stored near atmospheric pressure at ambient temperatures. The volume of the container follows the quantity of stored gas, with pressu ...

known as the "No. 2 Cityholder" was removed in 1985. As a result of the processes in its operation, land surrounding the works was badly contaminated with

polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon A polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) is a class of organic compounds that is composed of multiple aromatic rings. The simplest representative is naphthalene, having two aromatic rings and the three-ring compounds anthracene and phenanthrene. ...

s (PAHs). From the mid-1980s, a major environmental remediation project on behalf of the State Energy Commission of Western Australia, which owned the land, was undertaken to remove the contaminated soils created by the works. Remediation included dredging of of adjacent riverbeds and removal and treatment of of soil.

References

{{reflist East Perth, Western Australia Oil and gas companies of Australia