PORT Stephens Council has dodged a $600,000 clean-up bill after mayor Bruce Mackenzie’s controversial direction to dump more than 3500 cubic metres of soil and building waste at a Salt Ash Pony Club park.
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The NSW Environment Protection Authority fined the council $45,000 in October for the “unlawful transport of waste and use of land as a waste facility”, but approved a 12-month deadline for the council to use the waste as a capping layer on a decommissioned Raymond Terrace landfill area.
“The granting of this exemption means that 3500 cubic metres of soil will be re-used rather than disposed of to landfill and that council avoids what would have been a $600,000 disposal bill if the material had to be landfilled,” councillors were advised last week.
The waste would be moved from the pony club site to the Raymond Terrace site by the end of May.
Mr Mackenzie controversially directed soil from a council development site at Medowie and a car park at Salt Ash hall to be dumped at the pony club site at Alexander Park to build a BMX track, saying the council only had $10,000 for the project.
Mr Mackenzie said at the time that “I’m going to get this BMX track done come hell or high water”.
Although the council said the material was free of contamination, the EPA later confirmed acid sulfate contamination.
In October, after the EPA issued the council with a $45,000 fine, Port Stephens MP Kate Washington asked the then Local Government Minister Paul Toole if he had received advice from his department about surcharging the fine to Mr Mackenzie.
On December 23 Mr Toole said the power to surcharge a councillor, general manager or member of a council’s staff resides with the chief executive of the Local Government Department and “it would be improper for me to instruct the chief executive in the exercise of administrative powers”.
By February, 2016 the waste dumping exercise had cost $40,000. The total cost is expected to be many tens of thousands of dollars higher by the time the material has been moved from the site.
Ms Washington, Port Stephens councillor Geoff Dingle and Salt Ash Pony Club president Lisa Gregory said the huge expense and problems with the EPA were a mess of the council’s own making, with the community bearing the cost.
“We were told this soil was dumped here to build a BMX facility for kids because the council only had $10,000 for the project, and not one cent more,” Mrs Gregory said.
Mr Dingle said the amount of building waste in the soil made it completely unsuitable for a BMX facility.
Mr Mackenzie and son Robert are involved in separate legal action by the EPA after their company, Grafil Pty Ltd, was charged with using Macka’s Sand and Soil at Salt Ash as an unlawful waste facility.
The EPA launched criminal proceedings against Grafil in the Land and Environment Court after investigations of alleged dumping from 2013, when stockpiles of waste up to eight metres high, 40 metres wide and 100 metres long were found near and in waterways at the site.
Grafil pleaded not guilty to the charge in early April.
The EPA initiated the Land and Environment Court action a day before announcing it had fined Grafil and Macka’s Sand $15,000 for land pollution by asbestos waste, after asbestos was confirmed in some of the waste.
