Neville Callow owns a 39-hectare property next to the Fiskville training facility, which was closed in March after a cancer cluster was discovered among firefighters who lived and trained there.

On Monday, Mr Callow told a Victorian parliamentary inquiry the training facility’s burning pad was a little more than 100 metres from his boundary.

“In the 12 years I’ve owned this property, my family and anyone who has visited has been exposed to black smoke on a regular basis,” he said.

But things looked set to improve when he agreed to sell part of the farm to the CFA to create a buffer of land between the burn pad and the Callows’ property. 

However, relations soured when the deal fell through and the farmer continued his objections about the CFA’s training exercises, he said.

“Looking back over the years, I have been bullied and harassed by CFA management,” Mr Callow said.

The farmer said he did not feel the CFA had taken his concerns about air pollution or soil and water contamination seriously.

“They basically said ‘we the CFA have been here for 20 years. We have 800 volunteers. We can do what we like. You are nothing but a nuisance’,” Mr Callow told the inquiry.

The inquiry also heard from Kenneth Lee, a Fiskville supervisor of 20 years who was diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2013. 

Mr Lee said firefighters used to bury or burn chemical drums at the training site without knowing what was inside them.

He said as a burning pad operator he would receive semi-trailer truckloads of 40-litre drums containing fuel or unidentified chemicals that were then used for training. 

Mr Lee also said he never received training from the CFA on how to handle chemicals.

But he did notice a change in how the CFA handled chemicals a few years before he retired in 1999.

Mr Lee told the committee he would like to see the toxic training site cleaned up and compensation offered to victims. “So many deaths in the one workplace is no coincidence,” he said.

United Firefighters Union secretary Peter Marshall said the recent claims were only the “tip of the iceberg”. 

“We are finally getting to the bottom of the cover up we now know as the Fiskville saga,” he said. 

The next public hearing will be held on June 15.

melissa.cunningham@fairfaxmedia.com.au

– with AAP