this website<\/a> and click on submissions. Submissions close on 31 October.)<\/p>\nIn its draft submission to the inquiry, the council notes that Australia does not have experience operating energy-to-waste incinerators.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reference plant for the Veolia ARC project is located in Staffordshire, United Kingdom,\u201d the submission says. The council and Tarago residents spoke with a community reference group from Staffordshire, which said local residents there accepted the need for the energy-to-waste incinerator because of a lack of alternatives, in particular the lack of land and available space for landfilling.<\/p>\n
Clearly, this was not the case in NSW given the availability of land and the push towards a circular economy that focused on reusing materials rather than burning them, the council said.<\/p>\n
Reverend Davey is the chair of the Goulburn-Mulwaree Cross-Party Working Group on Waste Incinerators. He says cleaner alternatives than a $600 million incinerator are available to handle waste.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can reduce the amount of packaging you are producing in the first place, by sensible packaging laws,\u201d he said. \u201cSecondly, you can increase the amount you are recycling so you are diverting from landfill. Thirdly, particularly in Australia, you can increase the amount of landfill. There\u2019s a myth going around saying landfills are going to fill up and there is a fixed amount. Well, that\u2019s not true.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reverend Davey said government documents showed they could increase the amount of landfill they had, which then bought more time.<\/p>\n
He said incinerators burned 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for decades, which was why the NSW Government said this one wasn\u2019t suitable for Sydneysiders.<\/p>\n
![\"man\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Reverend-Paul-Davey-Campaigning-1-1200x987.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Reverend Paul Davey says plenty of people in Sydney are fighting alongside Goulburn and district activists such as himself to oppose a waste incinerator at Tarago. Photo: Davey family.<\/p>\n
\u201cWaste incineration is an inherently risky thing to do,\u201d he said. \u201cOnce you burn it and whatever emissions come out the top of the stack, you have lost control of those things and they will go everywhere.<\/p>\n
\u201dThey will blow wherever the wind sends them and that then presents a potential risk to our air that we breathe, the water that we drink and on the land and coming through our food chain, that\u2019s a great risk.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said risks would be borne disproportionately by the young, the elderly and those who were less well-off.<\/p>\n
\u201dChildren developing in the womb and after birth are particularly vulnerable to toxins in their environment,\u201d Reverend Davey said.<\/p>\n
Representing 120 agricultural enterprises within a 40-kilometre radius of the proposed incinerator, Longwater Agricultural Association spokesman and farmer Tom Martin said the association\u2019s members\u2019 land covered 60,000 hectares producing lamb, beef, wool, cereal crops, canola, pulses and eggs.<\/p>\n
\u201cVeolia and the NSW Government are attempting to greenwash the waste-to-energy proposal as a progressive environmental solution,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But he believed this was false. His members\u2019 key concerns were modern incinerators emitted pollutants including nitro sulfur oxides, dioxins, furans and PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances).<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of these travel kilometres from the stack, depositing on soil, pastures, waterways and local house roofs,\u201d Mr Martin said.<\/p>\n
For farmers, even trace contamination had economic consequences. Produce contamination, real or perceived, undermined market confidence in clean local produce.<\/p>\n
Mr Martin said Veolia\u2019s poor record of multiple breaches of environmental rules included PFAS and PFOS (perfluorooctanesulfonic acid) leaching off-site into Crisp\u2019s Creek and into the Mulwaree Ponds, at the start of the Sydney Water Catchment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Morass Wetland in 2021, near Lake Bathurst and a haven for wildlife. Opponents of a waste-to-energy incinerator…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245658,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[64,63,128,338],"class_list":{"0":"post-245657","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"wetland\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/The-Morass-1200x904.jpg\")
<\/p>\n