Official Publication of the
ISSUE 77 | APRIL/MAY 2017
www.insidewaste.com.au
INSIDE 18 A busy year for Vic 22 Change your profitability 36 Breaking the vicious circle
WMAA honours excellence and innovation More than 200 wasties gathered at Rosehill Gardens in March to celebrate excellence and innovation in landfills and transfer stations. Pictured are the (very happy) 2017 winners along with WMAA CEO Gayle Sloan in the middle (more on the winners in the story on the right). Unfortunately, Townsville City Council was unable to make the event due to Cyclone Debbie. (Credit: Paul Benjamin Photography)
$700M EfW facility progresses amid opposition
PP: 255003/07055
ISSN 1837-5618
DESPITE opposition from the local community and NSW Greens, Dial a Dump Industries (DADI) has progressed with its $700 million Eastern Creek energy from waste facility at the Eastern Creek industrial park, lodging a submission for approval to the NSW Planning Assessment Commission (PAC) at the end of March. DADI chief executive Ian Malouf said the facility, which will convert residual waste to power, will prevent the release of three million tonnes of greenhouse gas and divert more than one million tonnes of waste from landfill a year. The community and NSW Greens have been vocal about the potential air quality and human health impacts of the facility and the EPA has said in its submission to the Planning Department that DADI had not provided enough information
about the feedstock the plant would process, making it “difficult to properly and robustly assess the potential impacts”. The EPA said some 20% of the proposed fuel mix had been described as “other” or “other combustibles”, offering “insufficient detail”. Additionally, NSW Health, in its submission, said the proposal was not consistent with more than “100 years of environmental regulation to improve urban air quality”. Malouf has brushed off these objections, saying the plant would be the most sophisticated, integrated plant in the world. He also questioned if people had actually read the extensive documentation or are “pretending to have read it” and then running “scare campaigns”, adding that he’d welcome government inquiries and independent reports.
Malouf confirmed that the facility would be built based on the latest European and Australian engineering and environmental standards, and outputs would be below the limits set by the EPA and strict European directives, noting that in many cases, these outputs were not even detectable. “The facility’s pollution controls will be monitored live by the EPA 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with results published publicly,” Malouf told The Sydney Morning Herald in March. The facility, which will generate electricity for 200,000 homes across Sydney, will sit alongside DADI’s Genesis Xero plant and if all goes according to plan, will commence operations in 2019.
SOME 250 people gathered at Rosehill Gardens on a hot and muggy evening in March - ice cold beers helped cool them down - to honour exceptional landfills and transfer stations at the Waste Management Association of Australia’s 2017 Landfill and Transfer Stations conference. The Innovation and Excellence awards, which were given out at the awards dinner on the evening of Wednesday, March 29, showcase the best that landfills and transfer stations have to offer, with the aim of applauding sites that are exceptional and encourage best practice in operations. Taking home the 2017 Landfill Excellence Award, sponsored by the Australian Landfill Owners Association (ALOA), was Dulverton Waste Management for its landfill site in Devonport, Tasmania. Turning to innovation, Toowoomba Regional Council Waste Service took out the competition, winning the Innovation Award sponsored by Wastech Engineering. The Council was also the only finalist at the dinner that did a live presentation the others showed videos - and wowed with its automation system. Last, but certainly not least, Townsville Waste Services won the Transfer Stations Excellence Award sponsored by Wastech Engineering for its Magnetic Island Transfer Station. Inside Waste will be speaking to the winners soon and will bring you the details of each project and site that have swayed the judges in their favour.