RYE LANDFILL
Cr Fraser – On the 27 January 2016, Council rescinded or revoked its 14 December 2015 resolution requiring the Rye landfill to remain open pending the provision of an incinerator or like Alternative Waste Treatment facility to be constructed at Tyabb. When this could occur is profoundly uncertain. This resolution propounded by Cr Gibb and seconded by Cr Celi was, to say the least, precatory, unsafe and unsound for the reasons I expressed at the last meeting and has been set aside.
Since that meeting, the CEO last week restructured the Renewable Recourses management – separating Waste management off to a new Infrastructure Service Unit and creating a new Climate Change, Energy and Water Unit. This is an excellent functional move consistent with Council’s commitment to carbon neutrality.
Council’s Financial Manager has also provided the total waste picture by means of a comprehensive profit and loss statement for municipal kerbside green waste, kerbside waste, kerbside recycles, and kerbside hard waste.
I am indebted to Mr Oz for the careful preparation of this statement, which is the first occasion that such a business like document for waste has been available and demonstrating that the current (actual 2015FY) waste cost is $11m pa or $127 per household per annum.
Further we now know as a result of the EOI process that if another cell is opened post June 2018 expanding the Rye landfill, the total cost will rise to $155 per household per annum. If not, and waste is offshired post June 2018, then the EOI indicative cost will rise an average additional $27.20 per household per annum. (See Council minutes 14 September 2015 page 23 and 14 December 2015 at page 997)
However, I have now read the conditions of the Expression of Interest Documents advertised by Council to the market and in particular paragraphs 2.3.5 and 2.4.
These EOI conditions assume, if not expressly provide, that the contracts by which Council operates its three bin kerbside waste collection service to the Rye landfill will remain undisturbed or not varied.
Yet how can this be so? The EOI conditions refer to the Bulk Haul Facility located at available sites at Fingal (Rye), Mornington, and Tyabb. It would be uncommercial to think that the contractors carting from kerbside to the Rye landfill would not seek a variation to their contracts and at a cost to Council should Council require cartage from kerbside to Mornington or Tyabb, if not Rye.
But Council has not been told as to what is to be done about these contracts? Are they to be varied and if so at what cost to council? How are these contracts to be incorporated in the holistic Waste Strategy which management seeks to put forward? I do not think we can proceed without this timely advice from management.
But is it necessary to have such a bulk haul facility provided in the Shire – at Mornington, Tyabb, if not Rye?
A moment’s thoughtful reflection would reveal that our growing urban populations of Mornington, Mt Eliza, Baxter, Somerville, Tyabb and Hastings are only an average distance of 32.26k from the commercial landfill at Hampton Park – and, by comparison, an average distance of 38.16k from Rye!
Again a moment’s thoughtful reflection would suggest that waste could go from these areas directly into the landfill at Hampton Park at a considerable capital cost saving. However, the EOI conditions insisted on the provision of the bulk haul facility in the Shire which considerably adds to the EOI contractors’ off shiring indicative cost.
This EOI process and conditions imposed by management has left much to be desired. Council requires further advice from management was to what is to be done to glean from a truly competitive and informed market, the best possible cost and arrangement for disposal of municipal kerbside waste other than at the Rye Landfill.