Proposed Waste Dump Site Information

The proposed site (Site 7) is a combination of 2 properties, Sherraloy and Edington, owned by Derry Crisp and Ken Waters respectively.

Ken Waters is a Councillor of Armidale Dumaresq Shire Council and a member of the National Board of Greening Australia. Derry Crisp is a local Real Estate Agent and was involved in the preliminary identification of waste and rubbish dump sites for Armidale Council.

The site is located just off the Waterfall Way (a National Tourist Route), 12 kilometres east of Armidale. The combined site is intended to be around 80 hectares in size.

Upon viewing the proposed site it is possible to immediately make the following observations:

  1.  The proposed site is adjacent to the Gara River, which shortly downstream enters the Oxley Wild Rivers National Park.
  2.  The Oxley Wild Rivers National Park is part of the Central Eastern Rainforests of Australia World Heritage site.
  3.  The proposed site is in an area visible from the Waterfall Way tourist route.
  4.  The proposed site contains numerous trees and is situated in a sloped valley

 

Armidale Dumaresq Council has admitted that the waste dump will accept refuse and waste from not only Armidale, but also Guyra, Uralla and Walcha and possibly more centres as Council sees fit.

At a Northern Regional Inland Waste meeting in 2001 Armidale Dumaresq Council stated that:

‘.. they were investigating the possibility of establishing a regional landfill and would be interested in considering any proposal for landfilling of the regions clinical waste if and when the matter was formally proposed’

Clearly Armidale Dumaresq Council is considering accepting waste from across the entire Northern New South Wales region, possibly as a means of revenue generation.

The access to the Waterfall Way from these other centres requires that all waste would be trucked through the business and residential areas of Armidale.

It is also intended that roadside rubbish collection trucks will proceed directly to the site, noting that any chemical placed in the non-recycling portion of the bin will be dumped on the proposed site.

Of serious concern to the Gara Valley Environment Preservation Association is an observation of the site by Armidale Dumaresq Council’s own consultants:

‘..the site is located mid-catchment, with potential for flooding and there is previous evidence of flooding at the site’.2

The proposed regional waste and rubbish site is identified in the diagram below in red, the Gara River in blue:

We have submitted to the Armidale Dumaresq Council that any waste and rubbish dump should not be located in a catchment area which drains directly into the World Heritage listed Oxley Wild Rivers National Park, as Site 7 does.

We firmly believe that the inevitable leachate from any such dump will pollute the Gara River and the nearby Oxley Wild Rivers National Park.

Despite these strong and valid arguments against the commissioning of a new waste dump at Site 7, the Armidale Dumaresq Council has chosen to proceed with this flawed proposal.

The Gara River enters the Oxley Wild Rivers National Park a short distance downstream of the dump site.

The waste dump area is prone to flooding, as evidenced by this photo above, taken from a property adjoining the proposed waste dump site.

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