thing as Wittenoom. We have him to thank for that." Due to a lack of profitability however, the mine at Wittenoom was closed in 1966. Closing of the town As of 2016, Wittenoom had only three permanent residents who defied the Government of Western Australia's removal of services and its stated intention to demolish the town. On 30 June 2006, the Government turned off electric power to Wittenoom. There were still three residents in late 2018, when the government announced plans to force them out by compulsorily acquiring their properties. In November 2006, a report by consultants GHD Group and Parsons Brinckerhoff evaluated the continuing risks associated with asbestos contamination in the town and surrounding areas, classing the danger to visitors as medium and to residents as extreme. In December 2006, Minister for the Pilbara and Regional Development, Jon Ford, said that Wittenoom's status as a town would be removed and, in June 2007, he announced that the townsite status had been officially removed. Both the Department of Health and an accredited contaminated sites auditor reviewed the report, with the latter finding that the detected presence of free asbestos fibres in surface soils from sampled locations presented an unacceptable public health risk. The auditor recommended that the former townsite and other impacted areas defined in the report be classified as "Contaminated - Remediation Required". On 28 January 2008, the Department of Environment and Conservation classified Wittenoom as a contaminated site under the Contaminated Sites Act 2003. However, opinion is not unanimous on the danger posed. Mark Nevill, a geologist and former Labor MLC for the Mining and Pastoral district, said in an interview in 2004 that the asbestos levels in the town were below the detection level of most equipment, and the real danger was located in the gorge itself which contains the mine tailings. Residents once operated a camping ground, guest house and gem shop for passing tourists. The roof of the gem shop is now caved in and the wood of the guest house is rotten, while the camping ground is nowhere to be found. It was reported in 2018 that thousands of travellers still visited the ghost town every year, as a form of extreme tourism. The Australian Mesothelioma Registry (AMR) is a national database that keeps track of information about people who have been diagnosed with mesothelioma after July 2010. It records all new cases in