The capacity of Canberra's main rubbish tip will be extended by more than five years under plans to construct another three dumping cells.
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The moves come a year after an embarrassing management failure at the Mugga Lane Resource Management Centre left the tip within two months of running out of ready space.
A development application filed in November provides for the construction of cell "1", which provides another 28 months' capacity, and cells "3 and 4", which will add 39 months' to the working life of the tip.
As it operated this week the tip has capacity until about June 2018, after the latest cell, known as A2AC, began taking the city's waste in October.
The three additional cells would cost $1 million to build and push capacity out to about 2024.
A Territory and Municipal Services spokeswoman said average waste being landfilled at the Mugga Lane site at Jerrabomberra had trended down over the past five years. Nearly 20,000 tonnes per month had been received in the financial year to date.
In August last year the government body responsible for waste management, ACT NOWaste, learnt the tip would hit its capacity in two months, not in mid-2015 as it believed.
The failures of management and communication between the tip's private operator and ACT NOWaste led to an independent investigation and report by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, released in February, with all recommendations agreed to by TAMS.
"All the recommendations have either substantially been implemented or are currently being implemented where they related to longer term planning or are ongoing," the spokeswoman said.
Cell A2AC was the first of the new stage five development of the Mugga Lane site, and came on line as stage four had only a few months capacity left in its current phase, she said.
"When the Territory Plan Variation to allow a further 37 hectares of land for stage five was undertaken in 2012-13, it was estimated this would provide space to build landfill capacity through to at least 2035."
Cell 1 was funded in the 2015-16 budget and cells 3 and 4 have yet to receive funding.
Stages one to three cover areas going back to the 1960s.
Public submissions on the development application can be received until December 16.
Correction: A previous version of this article stated the Mugga Lane tip did not accept landfill waste in the period from October to December 2014. This is incorrect, the tip was open throughout that period but the standby tip at West Belconnen received about half of Canberra's landfill waste during this period.
