Explanation for New Waste Disposal Fees and Charges
Published on 07 July 2022
At its June Ordinary Meeting, Council adopted its Operational Plan, Budget and Revenue Policy for the 2022/2023 financial year following a 30-day public exhibition period of the draft documents and consideration of public feedback. This included changes to Council Fees & Charges.
Residents attending the Leeton Landfill will, from 1 July 2022, notice the introduction of a new charge for domestic mixed waste taken to landfill. For unsorted waste, the charge is $15 per Ute or Trailer load or $10 for a sedan or wagon. For sorted waste, the charge is $5 per load (where the bulk can be recycled).
Loads of 100% approved recyclable items remain free.
The Group Manager Operations, Tom Steele, said the Leeton Landfill is a sanitary landfill that is EPA licenced and, since FYE 2021, Council has commenced provisioning of approximately $350K per annum for future landfill rehabilitation.
“This provisioning obligation significantly impacts Council’s bottom line, along with a host of other Federal and State waste management mandates to which Council must respond, such as the 80% waste diversion targets Council must meet by 2030. We simply had to consider how Leeton Shire’s landfill service will be adequately funded going forwards”, he said.
Mr Steele advised it is general practice across NSW for disposal to a sanitary landfill to trigger a gate fee for casual users, including other Riverina centres with sanitary landfills such as Griffith, Temora and Wagga Wagga.
“Historically, Leeton Shire Council has borne the cost of domestic waste delivered to landfill by residents. This is no longer sustainable. Free landfilling also fails to drive the landfill diversion rates we need to achieve through better sorting at source and active recycling”, he said.
The recycled material that will continue to be received for free at the landfill includes e-waste, cardboard, chemical containers that are Drum Muster eligible, paint, gas bottles, fire extinguishers, oil, batteries, smoke detectors and fluorescent light tubes.
Mayor Tony Reneker said that Council deliberated long and hard about introducing a new fee but acknowledged that something had to be done to properly cover escalating service costs and to adequately prepare for the NSW Government’s Waste and Sustainability Materials Strategy goal of redirecting 80% of the waste currently going to landfill to recycling.
“As reluctant as we were to implement a landfill gate charge for domestic waste delivered by residents, as a Council we have to face the financial reality and we have to actively incentivise recycling.
“It was deemed unfair and irresponsible to increase the standard waste charges that all ratepayers pay beyond CPI as Council should not be penalising residents who try hard to minimise their waste and reduce their waste to landfill. A user-pays gate fee was therefore the fairer way to go.
“Following community feedback we addressed concerns about the new $15 landfill gate fee for mixed waste by adding an alternative, lower $5 fee for those members of the community who do the right thing by properly sorting their recycling from their mixed waste, meaning only a small portion of their load gets buried in the landfill.”
Mayor Reneker also said that Council will also be running a number of “dump for free” weekends throughout the year. Further information will be provided in due course regarding dates and times.
For more information, please visit Council’s website Leeton Landfill and Recycling Centre.