City of Bunbury and the Shire of Harvey, which originally established BHRC to manage waste, have agreed to contribute up to $1 million each to remove the remaining contaminated stockpile.<\/p>\n
BHRC will contribute a further $950,000 to the clean-up effort, according to council documents.<\/p>\n
BHRC chief executive Nick Edwards said multiple factors contributed to the contamination, including limited staffing and gaps in community understanding.<\/p>\n
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Nick Edwards says he is hopeful the Banksia Road facility will be reopened to accept FOGO by the end of summer. (ABC South West: Jacqueline Lynch)<\/p>\n
“One thing about organics in the South West is that it’s very much a community approach, and perhaps we didn’t communicate that as clearly as we could have,” Mr Edwards said.<\/p>\n
“It’s organic matter that people have used for their third bin, but there’s also a lot of plastic and glass and contaminants that have got in that bin as well.”<\/p>\n
Tough lessons learnt<\/p>\n
Mr Edwards said about 20,000 tonnes of organic matter needed to be cleared.<\/p>\n
“We are hoping to have it off certainly by the end of this coming summer, if we have the machinery available,” he said.<\/p>\n
Mr Edwards conceded the BHRC was underprepared for the volumes it received through the South West’s FOGO system.<\/p>\n
“We’re four or five people on that site trying to take care of it all. We hit a tipping point where we just could not keep up with materials that were arriving, with up to 30 per cent contamination in the truck.<\/p>\n
“We’ve had to learn some tough lessons.”<\/p>\n
Going forward, Mr Edwards said the BRHC “does not intend” to make the same mistakes again.<\/p>\n
“It is going to be time and us making sure that we fulfil our promises, and that is going to be the only way we can prove ourselves,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We don’t see this as a long-term debt. We’re hoping that this is a reset with an opportunity to recover those funds down the line.”<\/p>\n
Waste facility ‘missed the mark’<\/p>\n