By CASEY NEILL
A FLY infestation in Keysborough has closed a school and left business owners buzzing with anger.
They told the Journal that “billions” of the insects had been making their lives a misery since a fire destroyed a conveyor belt at Polytrade Recycling in Dandenong South on 17 January.
Polytrade has since filled a large warehouse at 57-67 Popes Road, Keysborough, with bundled household recycling and is unable to process it until the conveyor belt is replaced.
Business owners understand this could take six months and worry where the waste will wind up next.
They say flies are flocking to the unwashed plastic, cardboard, paper and tin, and are breeding and infiltrating surrounding premises.
Berry Street School senior education manager and head of campus Sue Nilsen cancelled classes at the Tower Court site for a week due to the swarms.
“We felt the flies posed both an environmental risk and a serious disruption to our students,” she said.
“The school reopened this week but the flies are still a definite issue and we continue to be concerned about the limited action taken to deal with the problem so far.”
Colin Boyd works in a factory that is 20 metres from the warehouse but said the problem spread for hundreds of metres.
“They’re immune to fly spray, that doesn’t even work anymore,” he said.
“There is a smell like you wouldn’t believe.
“The biggest smell is coming from the Dandenong council who have wiped their hands of the problem.”
He said a council representative visited the site and told him there was nothing the council could do because Polytrade was only warehousing the waste, not processing or manufacturing.
“We could fill this warehouse with buckets of sh** or nuclear waste as long as we’re not processing it?” he said.
The quality and compliance manager from a Popes Road food manufacturer said the issue was an urgent and high stakes problem.
“If a fly goes into one of our products, the whole reputation of the company will be under question,” he said.
“There’s only so much we can do.
“The waste has to go, and the whole place should be sanitised and sprayed.”
Easy Way Wholesalers managing director Manfred Dornbrach said he’d tried fly swatters, traps and sprays to no avail and had started a petition.
“As soon as we open the roller door, it’s like a vacuum – they just get sucked into our warehouse,” he said.
“I can’t take another day of it.”
Mr Dornbrach said the site had been fumigated several times.
“This lasts for one to two days and then we have a mass increase that builds,” he said.
Environment Protection Authority (EPA) spokeswoman Lauren Nowak said it received a pollution report about the problem on 4 March but that it was a local government responsibility.
“They give the permits,” she said.
“Eventually it could come to EPA in terms of illegal dumping of waste.
“At the moment it’s just temporary storage.”
Greater Dandenong’s planning, design and amenity director Jody Bosman said the council had been monitoring the site.
“Council requested that pest exterminators be engaged to deal with a fly problem at the site,” he said.
“Following an inspection on Tuesday 11 March, council’s view is that the fly problem is currently under control.
“Council will continue to monitor the site to ensure the fly problem is effectively managed.”
The Journal contacted Polytrade but did not receive a response before deadline.
