Tenterfield ratepayers could have been dumped with a $250,000 fine if councillors didn’t intervene in the handling of waste management issues.
This is the belief of both Tenterfield Shire Councillors Phil Yates and Lawrie West, who called for an extraordinary meeting to be held recently, after discovering the Tenterfield Shire Council had received a caution from the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH) in May, yet allegedly failed to pass this information on to councillors.
Cr Yates claimed that councillors were not given pertinent information on a regular basis.
“There are a lot of issues that are going on that the council is good at covering up but not cleaning it up,” Cr Yates told the Southern Free Times.
“What we’re told in the council is not what actually is happening at the coalface,” he claimed.
The NSW Office of Environment and Heritage wrote to the council several times, had site meetings and made numerous phone calls in regard to the Boonoo Boonoo landfill site.
“The aim was to assist the council to implement the EPA “Environmental Guidelines for Solid Waste Landfills” including, among other matters, the construction of the waste cells, leachate collection, monitoring and drainage systems,” an OEH spokesperson said.
“Some of the issues date back to the establishment of the site and others are ongoing, for example, forward planning necessary to implement the council’s future waste needs.
“OEH is continuing to work with the council to correct matters and seeking to minimise the potential for environmental harm and possible breaches of environmental legislation.
“OEH will only take regulatory action if the council fails to follow up on its commitments and implement necessary changes.”
The spokesperson said OEH was now happy with the council’s progression on resolving the issues that had been raised.
“OEH is working with the council to ensure the matters are progressed and finalised as soon as practicable.”
Tenterfield Shire Council general manager Jim Gossage said the council had already addressed some of the OEH’s issues, with others in the process of being addressed.
“We’re working with them so we comply with what they want,” Mr Gossage said.
“It’s not an issue I want to comment about,” he said.
In reply to the Southern Free Times’ question in relation to not reporting the matter to councillors as soon as the council received the official caution, Mr Gossage said, “I’m not going to comment on that”.
The Southern Free Times has obtained letters written by the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage to the Tenterfield Shire Council over a number of years, raising issues of high priority in relation to the Boonoo Boonoo landfill and the management of contamination at Crown Street, Tenterfield.
A letter dated January 21, 2010, stated that “a number of issues need to be addressed at both facilities (Boonoo Boonoo landfill and at the rear of the Sexton and Green Motortraders premises on the corner of Crown and Miles streets, Tenterfield) to ensure compliance with license conditions and to ensure no further potential harm to the environment occurs”.
“Rather than use punitive enforcement the Department’s preference is to work with the council to resolves these issues and provide the Tenterfield community with a cost effective and environmentally effective landfill facility. However, if there are ongoing breaches of licence conditions, the Department will need to consider appropriate regulatory actions in accordance with the Prosecution Guidelines to ensure compliance,” the letter stated.
The Department had also sent letters on May 21, 2007, September 10, 2007, and January 8, 2008, trying to finalise issues relating to the Boonoo Boonoo landfill that were identified originally in 2006.
In another letter dated June 24, 2010, in regards to water and soil sampling at the Crown Street premises and Tenterfield Transfer Station, it stated that “the Department notes that this matter has been ongoing since late 2009 and must be resolved as a priority”.
On May 16 this year, the Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH) issued the council with an official caution in relation to the Boonoo Boonoo landfill.
“It was identified that leachate from the leachate collection pond was in the process of being irrigated outside the waste cells and leachate collection system into the clean water bypass for the landfill and subsequently into Dismal Swamp Creek. The pump was immediately shut off,” the OEH wrote.
“OEH did consider prosecution through the court system or the issuing of a Penalty Infringement Notice for this offence.”
However, the OEH decided to issue an official caution on that occasion.
Yet, on August 25, the OEH told the council that “it would appear from the information supplied that the requirements of the OEH, as detailed in its correspondence of 21 January 2010 and 24 June 2010, have once again not been addressed. Consequently, the contamination has not been investigated adequately and OEH strongly recommends that the council review all this correspondence as a matter of priority and addresses the issues raised”.
It also said that, if certain actions are not implemented by the council within a certain timeframe, “the OEH will be left with no option other than to issue formal Notices to Council to enforce compliance with these requirements”.
On September 2, the OEH stated in a letter to Tenterfield Shire Council general manager Jim Gossage, that the Annual Return (AR) for the Boonoo Boonoo landfill Environment Protection Licence was submitted five months after the due date by the council, which forms a contravention of condition R1.5 of the licence.
“The contravention of any licence condition forms an offence under section 64(1) of the Protection of the Environment Operations Act 1997. The penalties for such an offence can be severe,” the letter stated.
“Furthermore, section C1 of the AR has been completed by the council to indicate that all conditions of its licence, including monitoring and reporting requirements, were complied with throughout the reporting period.
“Despite this, all the tables within section B2 (monitoring details) of the AR were left blank and section E of the document was also signed by yourself, indicating that all sections were correct and complete with no false or misleading material.
“It is an offence to supply any information in an Annual Return that is false or misleading in a material respect, or to certify a statement that is false or misleading in a material respect. The penalties for such an offence can be severe ($250,000 maximum in the case of a corporation, $120,000 for an individual),” the letter stated.
The council is now working with the OEH to try to resolve these issues as soon as possible.
