Volunteer firefighters and Indigenous rangers in the Northern Territory say an unprecedented and “shocking” amount of illegally dumped fridges, couches, mattresses and tyres in the bush is complicating controlled burns.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While dumped waste has always been a problem, the workers say it has reached a new level in the Top End regional centre of Katherine.<\/p>\n
“We try to put the fire around it, but it’s just getting worse every year,” senior Jawoyn ranger Felix Slater said.<\/p>\n
Mr Slater’s team has been responsible for hazard reduction burning on blocks of vacant Crown land.<\/p>\n
“Our goal is to get a good, clear burn in this burning we do in town,” he said.<\/p>\n
“But the battles \u2026 we’re dealing with [are] rubbish, furniture, fridges and tyres.”<\/p>\n
Felix Slater is concerned about his workers, and about the treatment of country. (ABC Katherine: James Elton)<\/p>\n
The team spends hours on each burning day identifying rubbish in the bush and wetting it down, or building fire breaks around it.<\/p>\n
Tyres emit columns of toxic black smoke when they catch and can burn for a long time.<\/p>\n
“It makes me feel sad, really, to see rubbish here on the land,” Mr Slater said.<\/p>\n
\u00a0“It’s bad for the nature as well. We need to look after country [and] country will look after you.”<\/p>\n
Rod Usher, captain of the Katherine Volunteer Bushfire Brigade, said there was a “shocking amount of rubbish in the scrub”, especially to the south of Katherine towards the Indigenous community of Binjari.<\/p>\n
“In the last few years, it’s escalated hugely. Markedly. It’s getting to be a problem,” Mr Usher said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Rod Usher says the amount of waste is shocking. (ABC Katherine: James Elton)<\/p>\n
“We’re trying to control fires and you come across gas cylinders, fridges, freezers \u2014 tyres are a big one.”<\/p>\n
“We had to remove 26 tyres and wheels right in the middle of a burn.”<\/p>\n
Mr Usher said accidentally burnt mattresses were hard to spot in the bush and their internal wires became “the best vehicle traps”.<\/p>\n
“Getting a \u2026 mattress out from under your vehicle once it’s all curled up and rolled around under the tailshaft and everything is not fun,” he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It’s easy to find mattresses, couches and tyres in the bushy blocks of vacant crown land around Katherine. (ABC Katherine: James Elton)<\/p>\n
Questions over tip fees<\/p>\n
While most residential rubbish is free to take to the tip in Katherine, items like couches, tyres and mattresses do come with individual charges.<\/p>\n
Mr Usher said it was no coincidence these were also the items showing up in the bush.<\/p>\n
“I understand why the dumps are charging and everything, but that’s why people are dumping,” Mr Usher said.<\/p>\n
“It’s just getting too expensive. Whoever dumped those 26 tyres saved themselves a fortune.”<\/p>\n
Regular passenger vehicle tyres are $35.10 each at the Katherine tip, so 26 tyres would cost $912.60 to dump.<\/p>\n
Internet archives show the council was only charging $12 each for passenger tyres in 2020-21, or about $15 in today’s money.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Fridges are one of the items that come with a fee for dropping at the tip. (ABC Katherine: James Elton)<\/p>\n
Katherine’s outgoing Mayor Lis Clarke said the council’s tip fees were reasonable and were constrained by limited recycling capabilities in the town.<\/p>\n
“There are huge fines for people that are illegally dumping, and they’re going to do that regardless of what we charge at the waste management facility,” she said.<\/p>\n
Local government elections are being held across most of the NT later this month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Volunteer firefighters and Indigenous rangers in the Northern Territory say an unprecedented and “shocking” amount of illegally dumped…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74185,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,57573,75,43183,52852,57574,51110,4896,3919,128,57575,19081],"class_list":["post-74184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-controlled-burns","tag-environment","tag-fire-season","tag-firefighters","tag-hazard-reduction","tag-illegal-dumping","tag-katherine","tag-rangers","tag-science","tag-tip-fees","tag-top-end"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74184","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=74184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}