BendigoWeekly www.bendigoweekly.com.au
ISSUE 1007 FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2017
Who will win? THE sporting stars of today and tomorrow will gather at Bendigo’s All Seasons Quality Resort tonight for the announcement of the Cloud Copy Click Sports Star of the Year awards.
An incredibly diverse array of sporting talent will be recognised, as part of the longest running community sporting awards in regional Australia. Preview pages 18-19
IN THE MIX
By SHARON KEMP
THE company that composts Bendigo’s organic waste in Stanhope has been sending it an hour and a half south to Bulla as construction of its own facility was delayed by a year. The City of Greater Bendigo council has stood by its 2015 contract with Biomix, claiming the young company had paid for the expense of rerouting waste it could not process at Stanhope, just an hour north east of Bendigo. Biomix had a mixed 2016, also incurring a $7500 fine from the Environmental Protection Authority for
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Firm forced to truck organic waste
illegally burning compost waste at its Two Tree Road premises a year ago. Owner Jackie Yong told the Bendigo Weekly Biomix was again accepting waste at Stanhope and the company had started construction of a facility that would allow it to expand composting operations and move into higher risk wastes by completing a first stage of composting indoors. The expansion will increase its capacity to 100,000 tonnes, which is
urgently needed with Bendigo households alone expected to contribute 12,000 tonnes of waste a year. The Biomix composting method was developed under an EPA research development and demonstration permit using an open air windrow composting technique. But the permit only allowed it to process up to 2000 tonnes of organic waste until construction of the in-vessel facility was complete.
Penalty rates cut – Page 3
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That limit was reached well before December 14 when council reported that since the full implementation of organics waste collection on September 5, more than 2500 tonnes of waste had been collected. At a rate of 300 tonnes per week, the Stanhope facility would have been at capacity by the end of October. Council manager of contract and project coordination Richard Morrison said he understood wet weather
had been an issue in constructing the new Biomix facility. Mr Morrison said it was written into the contract that Ms Yong would pay to have the waste processed at another facility if construction was not completed by June 1, 2016. “There are no issues from our perspective,” Mr Morrison said. He said he understood construction would be complete at Biomix by June 30 this year, a date Ms Yong declined to verify citing reasons of confidentiality. She said only a small amount of waste had gone to the Bulla plant which is operated by Veolia Group.
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