3 December 2021

Millions of dollars given to help Bega Valley and Eurobodalla with bushfire clean-up

| Albert McKnight
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Waste facility

The NSW Government will give Bega Valley and Eurobodalla millions of dollars for landfill improvements. Photo: BVSC.

Millions of dollars will be shared between the Bega Valley and Eurobodalla to assist the regions with the clean-up after the 2019-2020 bushfires.

The NSW Government is giving a combined $13.8 million to the two regions for landfill improvements.

“All these projects will help improve community resilience for future disasters by supporting essential services in areas still recovering from the devastating bushfires,” Minister for Environment Matt Kean said.

“We’ve been working with our regional communities and public land managers to make sure these programs address the real challenges they’re facing on the ground, while introducing measures to reduce future illegal dumping.”

Along with the deaths, trauma and devastation, the fires also caused a lot of waste.

For instance, it’s estimated 84,834 cubic metres of the Bega Valley Shire’s landfill airspace had been used by bushfire-generated waste.

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“This represents about 2.84 years of waste going to landfill based on our business-as-usual modelling,” Bega Valley Shire Council’s (BVSC) waste services manager Alan Gundrill said.

Information from a NSW Environment Protection Authority (EPA) spokesperson shows the largest shares of the funding will be used for an organics processing facility at BVSC’s central waste facility ($4.2 million) and to new cell works at the Eurobodalla’s waste management facility at Surf Beach ($4.6 million).

Also, about $1million will go to both the investigation and design of a new cell at the Brou Waste Management Facility, as well as to the Disaster Resilience and Masterplan for the Surf Beach Waste Management Facility.

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Mr Gundrill welcomed the news that his council had been included in the grant funding under the NSW Government’s bushfire clean-up package.

The EPA spokesperson said BVSC would also receive almost $115,000 to continue removing and deterring illegal bushfire dumping activities under the Bushfire Dumping Program.

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