26-09-2022
In recent months, Upper Lachlan Shire Council has had to revisit its bulky waste policy due to increases in costs and changes to environmental regulations.
“Waste is a complex area with a variety of different waste services delivered and administered by Council,” explained General Manager Colleen Worthy.
“In recent years the Legislative and Regulative requirements surrounding waste services have taken their toll on users and councils. In particular smaller regional councils, like ours, which in many cases have inherited the burden of legacy landfills, that are historic landfills built with little or no regulation or control measures.”
“This is the case in Upper Lachlan when the Shire inherited 5 remote legacy landfills which raised significant concerns from the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA), which ordered Council to either meet all the latest regulatory requirements and environmental standards or close.”
The impact of meeting these standards would have cost several millions of dollars or significant hefty fines from EPA, plus ongoing costs. With this in mind, the council of the day many years ago made the sound decision to close these landfills and convert them to remote Waste Transfer Stations. Crookwell remained Council’s only regional landfill site.
At present the Upper Lachlan Shire Council and its residents are reliant on waste contracts for the transfer and disposal of all of our waste to Woodlawn Landfill.
On average this bill is in excess of $650,000 per year or to put that into context, that’s a bill of $13 million over 20 years which will continue to grow as the number of operating landfills in the state become less and less and further away.
Additional to the $650,000 is the cost to transfer bulky goods like furniture to Woodlawn landfill and Council is reliant upon a contractor to collect and clean up the site which costs an average of $90,000 per year.
This bill is on top of the costs to simply operate and maintain the rural Waste Transfer Stations and central Waste Management Centre, and the cost to operate the kerbside waste collection which is run internally by Upper Lachlan Shire Council.
This involved many changes to the sites and the community will notice that the sites are now much cleaner and more functional. Council is however still under increasing pressure to meet more EPA regulations and at present the sites, even in their improved state miss the mark. Waste must be covered to prevent wind-blown material, leaching, vermin and so on.
This is why Council have large, lidded bins for the transfer of general waste and recycling for which Council relies upon a waste contractor to transfer to a large landfill, who monitor and meet EPA requirements.
This is not the case for waste items like bulky broken furniture that are dumped into a pile on the floor of the remote Waste Transfer Stations. This fails to meet the EPA requirement of operating a regional transfer station and Council have been warned that the practice cannot continue.
In 2019 to ensure Council met further stringent Regulatory and environmental conditions, Council resolved to cease landfilling operations in the Shire and to convert the Upper Lachlan Shire Council licenced landfill located at Crookwell into the Shires central Waste Management Centre operating a Transfer Station.
Since this decision Council’s Waste Services team have worked with the EPA to clean up the site, provide a functional transfer station, added further runoff catchment areas, increased environmental monitoring and sampling, develop an approved closure plan and so on. All to meet current environmental standards.
“It has become clear that over-Regulation of waste services and increasingly stringent licensing conditions is aimed at forcing Council landfill closures thereby reducing the number of landfill sites operated in NSW,” Ms Worthy said.
“There is a clear push towards large landfill sites aimed at servicing several Local Government areas, this may well be suitable for largely populated and metro areas but not in the Upper Lachlan Shire, where we find ourselves dealing with limited resources, low rate base and a large geographical area.”
With the EPA regularly inspecting sites, further changes required to meet our ever-increasing environmental and legislative requirements and cost escalations to contain, Council has begun a comprehensive review of its operations.
The first recommendation was for Council to cease accepting bulky waste such as broken furniture and large waste items at all its remote Waste Transfer Stations.
This is a requirement due to our inability to meet the regulatory requirements surrounding this waste and potential cost savings of up to $2 million over 20 years.
Council wants to continue to provide the best service possible however, increasing costs and regulatory requirements have made it impossible to continue business as usual so changes must occur to meet both environmentally and financially sustainable.
“Very little of the bulky waste received at the Transfer Stations is salvageable, it’s mostly broken or contaminated with other household waste and well beyond it usable life,’’ said Ms Alex Waldron Director or Environment and Planning.
Council will continue to accept all of the waste types previously accepted, with the exception of bulky waste and furniture.
The Taralga waste transfer station for example will still continue to accept most of the waste and recycling types previously accepted including; Household waste, garden organics (green waste), co-mingled recyclables, automotive oil, scrap metal, drum Muster, batteries and mattresses.