The contractor who has stockpiled a huge pile of Canberra glass sent to recycling on land near Lake George will meet the Yass council on Wednesday and says he will clean up the site.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
"It's my problem and I will get it fixed ... I don't like it as much as anybody else," Canberra contractor Garry Miller said. "I take full responsibility ... I desperately do want to get rid of it."
Mr Miller was speaking after it emerged last week that two huge piles of recycled glass from Canberra have been stockpiled on a property on Hadlow Drive, off the Federal Highway at Lake George, since 2014.
The Yass Valley council had shelved action on the dump, saying it did not want to spend public money on a clean-up and the site was not an environmental hazard. But after publicity last week, a meeting has been arranged.
Mr Miller said one option was to bury the glass for drainage under a driveway. He said there was about 2400 tonnes of glass "fines" on site, which Remondis, which had the contract to run the ACT government materials recycling facility, paid him to take in 2014.
The ACT government has washed its hands of the problem, insisting it has no relationship with Mr Miller's company Group 8 and no responsibility for the dump, despite it coming from ACT recycling bins. Mr Miller says he worked as a contractor to ACT government's No Waste about 2012, but the government has provided no information on that history.
Yass Council minutes also say that NSW and ACT environmental protection authorities stopped the glass being exported from Canberra in 2014, but this, too, remains unconfirmed by the ACT government.
In July 2015, then deputy chief minister Simon Corbell responded to letters from Lake George residents on the dump, saying each year the ACT's materials recovery facility generated 10,000 tonnes of glass fines (glass broken during collection and sorting) bigger than 12mm diameter, which were sent to Sydney "prior to recycling", and 8000 tonnes of smaller fines, which were "generally sent to landfill".
"The Group 8 proposal involves processing glass fines into products that can be used to replace aggregates and sand for use in construction of buildings and roads, and potentially to create pavers," he wrote. "Such an approach would divert glass fines from landfill and replace the use of mined sand and rock that would otherwise be used in these products."
About 2400 tonnes of glass from ACT recycling bins in two piles off the Federal Highway at Lake George.
A paper prepared for the Yass Valley council in May last year said complaints about glass being dumped began in November 2014. The glass was identified as coming from Canberra and "collaborative work by council staff, the NSW and ACT branches of the EPA stopped any further material from being released from the ACT."
In December 2014 Mr Miller agreed to lodge a development application for the glass by February 2015. In April 2015, the development application was lodged, but in October after objections it was withdrawn.
A letter to the council in August 2016 from Mr Miller's daughter said he had a property in the ACT to store the glass but it was a "pure financial issue", with truck hire costing $15,000, and they needed time to get the transfer done.
