Collie shire approve waste officer

The shire will provide a contributing $1690 from their 18/19 budget towards helping appoint a project officer for a period of 12 months.

The Bunbury Wellington Group of Councils, which comprise of 12 local governments in the South West agreed at its last meeting on June 11 to appoint a project officer to identify potential waste solutions as a matter of priority.

It was agreed at the meeting that the officer would be funded by all the local governments and would be hosted by the City of Busselton to provide regional waste solutions for the South West. 

Earlier in the year the state government took back $4 million of Royalties for Regions funding to the group because a shared waste site could not be agreed on.

At the meeting in Capel it was expressed that the only way any progress was going to be made on regional waste facilities was for the local governments to agree to fund a project officer position themselves. 

So far Capel, Busselton and Bunbury have agreed to allocate funding. However, not all of the councils have agreed to do so yet.

By appointing a project officer all waste options can be explored and considered, which may potentially enable the South West Group to make an application to the State Government for funding for a major investment in potentially waste to energy technology or other solutions later down the track. 

At the Tuesday night’s meeting shire president Sarah Stanley said the issue was a complicated one and that there had been sites that were identified that didn’t happen to work out which was why the funding was taken away. 

She said that all the local governments needed to work together but also individually look at what issues each individual location has.  

The group of councils also met in May where two presentations were made on potential waste solutions for the region.

Waste management company Talis Consultants showed local governments in the metro area are moving away from direct ownership and private public partnerships of waste facilities and are engaging private providers, on a fee for service basis, to take over and manage waste.

Waste to energy company InRim also presented to the group and explained how a waste to energy plant works. It also said it was working with Albemarle on a possible future power supply proposal at Kemerton.

City of Busselton Mayor Grant Henley said no feasibility study has been done for a waste to energy plant in the South West but it was still an option for the region.

“Waste to energy has the potential to improve resource recovery to up to 90 per cent,” Mr Henley said.

Shire of Collie chief executive officer David Blurton recently told the Mail that the shire would be interested in hosting a waste to energy plant if it was supported.