{"id":634845,"date":"2026-04-27T21:21:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T21:21:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/634845\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T21:21:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T21:21:12","slug":"scenic-rim-community-divided-over-proposed-cleanaway-waste-to-energy-incinerator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/634845\/","title":{"rendered":"Scenic Rim community divided over proposed Cleanaway waste-to-energy incinerator"},"content":{"rendered":"

A proposed $1.5 billion waste-to-energy incinerator has split a southern Queensland community, with supporters arguing it will ease Queensland’s growing landfill crisis and opponents fearing health risks.<\/p>\n

Waste company Cleanaway has put forward plans for the Bromelton Energy and Resource Centre just outside of Beaudesert on the Scenic Rim, about 70km south of Brisbane.<\/p>\n

If approved, the facility would process 760,000 tonnes of waste each year.<\/p>\n

According to Cleanaway, that would divert about 12 per cent of Queensland’s waste from landfill and generate enough electricity to power 105,000 homes and businesses.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

The incinerator would burn rubbish at temperatures of about 850 degrees.\u00a0 (Supplied: Cleanaway)<\/p>\n

The plant works by burning waste to heat a boiler which creates steam that drives a turbine and generates electricity.<\/p>\n

Waste-to-energy plants already operate in Western Australia, while proposals are also being considered in Parkes in New South Wales<\/a> and on the Gold Coast.<\/a><\/p>\n

But while supporters say the Scenic Rim proposal could bring jobs and investment to the region, some residents say they do not want the state’s waste problem brought to their doorstep.<\/p>\n

Health concerns<\/p>\n

Lizz Hills is a member of Keep the Scenic Rim Scenic, a community group that initially formed to oppose coal seam gas expansion in the area in the 2010s, and has reformed to oppose the waste incinerator proposal.<\/p>\n

She said she joined Cleanaway’s community advisory group with an open mind before deciding she was against the project \u2014 predominantly for health and environmental reasons.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Lizz Hills is part of the Keep the Scenic Rim Scenic group.\u00a0 (ABC News: Tobi Loftus)<\/p>\n

She said she feared pollutants coming out of the flue \u2014 and was concerned as the technology had been prohibited in parts of New South Wales, including Sydney and the Australian Capital Territory.<\/p>\n

“I don’t want them anywhere near my family. I don’t want them anywhere near our schools, my community,” she said.<\/p>\n

“If we’ve got two major capital cities going ‘let’s not put incinerators here’, why would we accept one in the Scenic Rim?<\/p>\n

“Are we just outsourcing a city’s waste problem to regional Australia?”\"A<\/p>\n

Keep the Scenic Rim Scenic was initially established to oppose coal seam gas expansion in the area in the 2010s. It has reformed to oppose the incinerator.\u00a0 (ABC News: Tobi Loftus)<\/p>\n

A ‘safe alternative to landfill’<\/p>\n

Cleanaway said the facility would use combustion controls, flue-gas treatment and continuous monitoring to keep emissions below environmental standards.<\/p>\n

The company said 99.9 per cent of emissions from the facility’s flue stack would consist of gases already present in the atmosphere.<\/p>\n

These include nitrogen and oxygen, along with carbon dioxide \u2014 which will make up about nine per cent of the emissions.<\/p>\n

The rubbish will burn at about 850 degrees, which Cleanaway said would remove harmful compounds \u2014 while multiple flue gas treatment processes will remove pollutants.<\/p>\n

About 0.1 per cent of the emissions will be compounds that need to be monitored to ensure they don’t exceed human health safety limits.<\/p>\n

“The BERC is not an incinerator like we have come to know them from decades past,” Cleanaway said.<\/p>\n

“This technology is always improving and thousands of modern energy from waste facilities around the world prove that this is a safe alternative to landfill.<\/p>\n

“At BERC, we will use the latest technology to control pollution, meet the strict environmental standards and protect the health of all.”<\/p>\n

The company said it would make emissions monitoring data public and would shut the facility down if necessary, in response to any incident.<\/p>\n

Experts divided on health impacts<\/p>\n

Dr Peter Tait from the Australian Public Health Association said older generations of incinerators had been linked to cancers and birth defects.<\/p>\n

“With newer incinerators, the claim is that they have technology to remove a lot of the bad stuff out of the emissions that are coming out of the smokestack,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Work we did more recently shows \u2026 the incinerators haven’t been in operation for long enough for health impacts to appear, and so it’s too early to be able to make the claim that they have no impacts or minimal impacts.”\"Man<\/p>\n

Dr Peter Tait says he is sceptical of health claims made about new generation waste incinerators.\u00a0 (ABC News: David Sciasci)<\/p>\n

Dr Tait said any future facility would need close monitoring, particularly during startup and shutdown periods, when the risk of exposure could increase.<\/p>\n

But Professor Damien Batstone from the University of Queensland’s Australian Centre for Water and Environmental Biotechnology said recent reviews of modern waste-to-energy technology had found no evidence linking facilities to cancer.<\/p>\n

He said new plants were far more advanced than earlier generations.<\/p>\n

“We’re now in generation four or five of waste incinerator technology, so gaseous management is very effective now,” he said.<\/p>\n

“You’ve got things like dioxins, heavy metals, polyaromatic hydrocarbons and a number of other contaminants like PFAS that need to be removed.<\/p>\n

“Current technologies remove those very effectively.”\"A<\/p>\n

Damien Batstone says incinerators are only a medium term solution to the waste issue. (ABC News)<\/p>\n

Incinerators ‘medium-term measure’<\/p>\n

Professor Batstone said waste-to-energy should be seen as an interim measure while Australia moved towards a circular economy.<\/p>\n

“[Landfill] is starting to run out,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We need better options to manage waste in the long term \u2014 that’s where we’re moving towards with society, but it’ll take us a while to get there and we need something that can fill the gap.”<\/p>\n

He said while Australia was “on the way” to a circular economy \u2014 which refers to recovering and reusing all elements of a production cycle \u2014 \u00a0the country was not there yet.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Over the next 20 to 30 years, we will move in that direction,” he said.<\/p>\n

“But at the moment there is going to be a substantial stream which can’t be recycled … waste-to-energy offers another opportunity.”<\/p>\n

He said the technology was expensive and warned any proposal would also need to manage issues such as truck movements and local pollution.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Thousands of new homes are expected to be built in Beaudesert in the coming years.\u00a0 (ABC News)<\/p>\n

Incinerator’s economic boost<\/p>\n

Back in Beaudesert, local chamber of commerce president John Powell said he believed the project could help support the region’s rapid growth.<\/p>\n

“We’ve got 4,000 new homes coming here in the next 15 years, that’s 20,000 extra people,” he said.<\/p>\n

“A waste-to-energy facility would allow more industry to come here and tap into lower cost electricity and would be just the tonic we need.”<\/p>\n

Mr Powell said he hoped the Bromelton State Development Area, where the facility would be built, could eventually become a broader circular economy precinct, attracting recycling and manufacturing businesses.<\/p>\n

He said he believed waste-to-energy incineration should only be used as a “last option” for material that could not be recycled.<\/p>\n

Mr Powell said he had confidence government agencies would monitor the facility and ensure it met environmental standards.<\/p>\n

Cleanaway submitted a planning application to the Office of the Coordinator-General in March. A decision is expected later this year or in early 2027.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A proposed $1.5 billion waste-to-energy incinerator has split a southern Queensland community, with supporters arguing it will ease…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":634846,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,30870,307378,75,2484,128,295323,148211,26079],"class_list":["post-634845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-beaudesert","tag-cleanaway","tag-environment","tag-scenic-rim","tag-science","tag-waste-incinerator","tag-waste-to-energy","tag-waste-to-energy-incineration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634845","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=634845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/634846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}