Waste time bombs for Hunter Valley
By Graham Williams
NEWCASTLE — Cessnock City Council was forced to release details of a video promoting the building of a waste dump at Cessnock on December 11. The Council has been investigating building a facility for waste from Sydney.
The proposed site is on Old Maitland Road, Cessnock. Sydney's dumps are reaching capacity, and Waste Service NSW is searching for a site where it can dump at least 8 million tonnes of garbage over the next 20 years.
The video reveals that Cessnock Mayor Merv Pyne supports a partnership between Cessnock City Council and Thiess Environmental Services, a super-dump development company.
The Kurri Kurri Landcare group and the Cessnock Anti-Sydney Tip group are opposing the dump. Col Maybury, of Kurri Kurri Landcare, has said that water at the proposed dump already has high levels of acid, electrical conductivity, sulphur, iron and manganese.
There is also a proposal by Collex Waste Management to create a dump in an old coal mine near Muswellbrook in the upper Hunter Valley, a rich wine-producing area. Winemakers are opposing the super-dumps because they fear that they could wipe out the famous Hunter Valley grapevines, destroying a multimillion-dollar industry.
The Hunter Water Corporation fears public health could be endangered by contamination of the lower Hunter's drinking water from a proposed super-dump in East Maitland. The proposed site at the old Bloomfield coal mine is 15 metres higher than Stoney Pinch Reservoir, which is a mere 75 metres away.
The dump is also a project of Thiess Environmental Services. The company proposes to build a "lid" to stop airborne contaminants.
On top of these waste dump proposals, the Hunter Valley's Liddell power station wants 10% of its fuel to be contaminated soil, coal-tar products and waste oil. Local residents see this as a step towards burning toxic waste in the power station.