The temporary mega-dump where the vast majority of the region’s flood waste was taken is being wound up by the NSW Government.
The Public Works Advisory (PWA) said that work started yesterday to permanently close the facility, which is located at the Boral asphalt quarry site on Gap Road, Alstonville.
The facility was set up at the beginning of March to temporarily accept flood waste from Northern Byron, Lismore, Casino, Ballina, Lower Richmond and surrounding areas.
‘The facility will no longer be accepting flood waste and will reduce its operation hours to 7am – 6pm,’ a spokesperson for the PWA said.
‘Truck movements will decrease significantly over the coming weeks and are expected to cease completely by 24 April 2022. The final stage of works will involve rehabilitating the site.’
The facility has played a crucial role in removing flood waste from thousands of properties across our region, accepting over 7,000 truckloads of flood waste.
The PWA has previously stated that it hoped 40 per cent of the waste would be recycled. It has not indicated whether this target is likely to be met.
The waste that has not been recycled will be compacted, loaded into large haulage trucks and taken to the Veolia Ti Tree Bioenergy Facility in Willowbank, Qld.
Located on the outskirts of Ipswich, the facility is said to utilise ‘best practice’ bioreactor technology to rapidly ‘stabilise’ waste, while capturing environmentally damaging methane and converting it into electricity.
However, the site also has a ‘37 million cubic metre void leftover from a previous open cut coal operation’, suggesting that a significant proportion of the waste will become landfill.
Should never been inflicted on the Alstonville residents in the first place. A bit of a stretch to call it a facility.
Imagine if funding wasn’t cut to science… we may have had a better option rather than shitting on the ecology and covering it up like a dog…