The Victorian Government’s wasted waste policy

It would be difficult to find stronger evidence for protecting an area from a hazardous waste facility. Of course much of this evidence was available in various forms prior to the Biosis study and one only had to speak to local and regional experts to see how environmentally significant the site was. Indeed, it was obvious within a few days of the site’s proposal that the Government was jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. While the initial three sites were totally inadequate, the Hattah site was by far the most environmentally sensitive of the proposed sites. The environmental and legal obstacles will prove insurmountable and can only seriously delay - if not totally undermine - the government’s policy. Meanwhile the Lyndhurst landfill owners continue to smile all the way to the bank.

Landfill by stealth

As if this wasn’t sufficient to make the cynics scream “sabotage”, MPV simultaneously began a process of promoting a landfill design instead of the promised “containment facility”. Instead of initiating a transparent process for developing “innovative technology” for the LTCF, as promised by the Government, MPV employed a single consultancy company to design the facility in secret. Not surprisingly MPV and the consultant (GHD) have now publicly promoted a landfill under the guise of a LTCF.

The proposed design would entail the excavation of 4m deep “cells”, 35m by 50m, in a row of 5, making a series of holes more than 250m long. These cells would be lined in a manner similar to that proposed by CSR for their Werribee dump. Inside a movable, temporary structure, the waste would be tipped into the holes to a height of about 2-3m above the ground - similar to current practices at Lyndhurst. The cell would be progressively capped with a liner and soil. All very familiar to the landfill industry - the current manager of Lyndhurst recently claimed that their latest hazardous waste cell was a long-term containment facility of this type.

So the problem is compounded: we now have a fairly traditional landfill, similar to the “toxic dump” proposed for Werribee back in 1996, being located in a highly environmentally significant and sensitive site at Hattah.

The landfill industry is happy, the industrial generators of hazardous waste keep their collective heads in the sand and the government remains ignorant of the extent to which it is being duped and undermined by MPV.

But the community is not happy. There is overwhelming unity in north-west Victoria in opposition to the proposed landfill. In Melbourne an alliance of environmental groups has formed to oppose the proposal while the Western Region Environment Centre has actively investigated alternative sites and more appropriate technologies, with considerable success.

The strength of community opposition, fuelled by incontrovertible environmental arguments, will ensure that the Hattah site has very little chance of succeeding. The legal obstacles that MPV will have to overcome to obtain any kind of permit will pale into insignificance in the face of community outrage.

Which leaves the government’s admirable hazardous waste policy five years on the road to nowhere. Unless the government starts to listen to others besides MPV and the landfill industry, its credibility on waste management will be seriously eroded - there are a number of answers available to the Premier if he is willing to listen.