By Cam Lucadou-Wells
A Dandenong South waste-to-energy proponent will submit its interest in a 16-council consortia’s tender process for advanced waste solutions in Melbourne’s South East.
Great Southern Waste Technologies will propose its controversial site at 70 Ordish Road, which has been overwhelmingly opposed by schools and residents in neighbouring Keysborough.
The consortia’s South East Metropolitan Advanced Waste Processing Procurement process is being led by the Metropolitan Waste and Resource Recovery Group. The group includes Greater Dandenong Council.
“I don’t think the proposal is understood yet by the local residents,” GSWT chief operating officer Bill Keating said of the heated community objections.
“We’re not there to cause harm. We’re out there to cause benefit in terms of the actual amount of pollution.
“We’re not belching out smoke or toxic chemicals – it’s illegal to do that. The EPA just won’t allow that to happen.”
Compared to the waste going to landfill, the plant would be “environmentally positive” and a “better solution”.
It would result in less carbon-dioxide emissions and groundwater contamination than dumping waste at the tip.
Mr Keating acknowledged strong community objections to emissions and ground-level concentrations and how they will be measured.
It was wrongly reported that about three per cent of the waste will be emitted as fly-ash, Mr Keating said. It would be captured in a bag filter within the plant, rather than expelled into the atmosphere.
Particulate-matter air emissions would be “near zero”, he said.
“We have to be below that 10-parts-per-million (threshold) – and we are.”
The tender process isn’t expected until later this year, with the impact of Covid-19 an unknown obstruction.
Greater Dandenong is among the 16 councils that are part of the South-East advanced-waste consortia. It delayed a decision on a building works permit for the GSWT proposal.
With the 60-day statutory time limit expired, GWST has lodged for the permit to be heard at the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT).
GWST is also awaiting approval from Environment Protection Agency Victoria (EPA).
The 1.27-hectare site at Ordish Road is in an industrial 2 zone identified by the State Government as a waste and recovery hub of state importance, the proponent argues.
The plant will process 100,000 tonnes of waste, mainly from households, that would otherwise go to landfill.
It would generate about 7.9 MegaWatts of power into the grid – suffice for about 7000 homes and businesses.
Mr Keating said the technology had been “well proven” in Europe, easily meeting European Union emissions standards.
The plant would employ 30 workers with a further 30 indirect jobs, Mr Keating said.
