Waste management can be a messy subject. Here in the Northern Rivers, we have been thought and practice leaders in resource recovery and circular economy.
Unfortunately, the 2022 floods seriously impacted our community infrastructure at the Wyrallah Road Waste and Recycling Centre, and our community’s commitment to a more circular economy in the 2022-2032 Waste Strategy has been deprioritised in favour of ‘cheaper’ solutions.
The 2022-2032 Waste Strategy was developed with extensive community consultation between the end of 2020 and the start of 2022. It was exactly the type of community endorsed plan our local area, region and planet needed to guide the future for waste.
Fundamental to the strategy was that circular economy principles of waste avoidance is the only realistic long-term strategy for Lismore, and that we must move away from the last step of disposal as a meaningful waste management strategy.
This community-guided and endorsed strategy was approved by Council after the floods and was part of our promised recovery pathway. But through 2025 and 2026, an alternate vision was being developed by Lismore City Council. You might not have heard yet, but we are now informed that plans are well underway for the Blakebrook Quarry, on the Lismore-Nimbin Road, to become a regional landfill site with an expected lifespan of 50+ years.
A massive new landfill to receive waste from all across our region is a controversial proposal; I doubt anyone would dispute this. Waste dumps are noisy, smelly, disrupt road networks, threaten water systems, risk regenerative agriculture, waste money and continue the most unnecessary harmful unsustainable aspects of a throwaway society.
But council staff have developed this concept and presented Blakebrook as the location. Chief among the reasons for this location are the ‘lower costs’ and the site being off the floodplain. Blakebrook was one of 30 possible sites for analysis, and one of six sites subject to a site inspection. There is no information about the other sites.
After speaking with many in the community about this proposed development, there is genuine criticism about the development process occurring largely behind closed doors, with enforced confidentiality and there is significant concern about the merit of the development and its proposed location.
Council took the approach of not coming out earlier or consulting on other options, to spare more of the community the anxiety of thinking their local environment may become the region’s rubbish dump (along with the significant and harmful impacts that brings) and because they determined other options to be less economically feasible.
While this approach is understandable, it doesn’t mean it was the better approach. The single most important element of industrial developments like these, in landscapes like the Northern Rivers and in communities like ours, is social licence.
Social licence is not like development consent or an environmental protection licence, where you just pay the consultants, have a few meetings with technocrats, jump the hurdles and pay the upfront fees. At its core, is trust, respect, genuine dialogue, listening, learning and understanding the ‘real costs’ of impacts.
Social licence is not transacted, given or coercively taken, it has to be earned and it is never guaranteed. Metgasco, the CSG company that had all the state and local approvals in place to develop industrial gas fields here in the Northern Rivers learnt this at Bentley.
At the first information session held recently at the Goolmangar Hall, I saw and heard people who are worried, stressed and anxious about what it would mean to turn Blakebrook Quarry into a regional rubbish landfill operation. People coming together is a wonderful thing, it is cruel that we have to do it when we have harmful things thrown at us, and we enter a space with little to no agency and trust.
Many issues, impacts, rationales and questions were discussed. There were a few overarching themes: is the vision for Lismore really as the region’s waste dump? Given the landfill is only economically feasible if it becomes the region’s dumping ground, doesn’t that encourage more waste not less? What kind of legacy are we seeking in a world that is choking on waste?
Why would anyone think it feasible to site a landfill that will receive some of the region’s most dangerous and toxic waste products just above Terania Creek, which becomes Leycester Creek, which then flows into the Heart of Lismore and Wilson’s River?
Opposition to Council’s shock proposal can be seen as something to fear or to steamroll over or it can be seen for what it really is – an opportunity for us all to turn to the real solutions to waste: avoid, reduce, reuse. The illusions of convenience and low costs associated with landfills – let alone new landfills – are just that, illusions.
Landfills have a recovery and on-going impacts legacy that can last for centuries, leaching toxic products into ground and surface water when lining materials inevitably break down and allow leaks. Then there are the real costs of the absence of social licence, these can be prohibitively costly.
Most importantly, they steal investment from current and future opportunities to achieve the circular economy that all evidence says is necessary for even our short-term future health and wellbeing.
We don’t have to look far to see how things are changing for the better, with vision and the courage to invest and lead. Just last month, Bega Valley Shire Council were in the national spotlight for their plan to meet waste reduction and recovery minimum standards, with a comprehensive plan to see and use waste as a resource instead of a liability, or a money-making venture for their region.
Bega is setting an example that Lismore can still be part of. We have State and Federal Governments that recognise our waste crisis, that are willing to invest in Councils that are ready for change, our elected leaders just need to reach out and grab these opportunities – it’s the only way we can truly and finally deal with the mess of waste.
Perhaps the most important thing right now, is that the people who will be most impacted by this idea are really pissed off about it, and they need your help. They are building a campaign of truth, transparency and accountability.
As always with our community, we need to be there for each other, so folks if you have a vision for Lismore, that is not being the region’s waste dump, now is the time to get informed and involved.
