Many were up in arms over Veolia Environmental Services’ bid for the Woodlawn Bioreactor to increase its receipt of 500,000 tonnes per year to 1.13 million tonnes.

Barbara and Richard Fairfax own a property about 2km south west of the bioreactor and they have lodged countless complaints with Veolia about the pungent odour.

“We ring up quite often to say we are getting the smell from the place and we get told they’re working on it. They record it but it seems that is as far as it goes,” Mr Fairfax told the Goulburn Post after the meeting, hosted by the NSW Planning Assessment Commission (PAC).

“They never seem to do anything about it though because the problem isn’t getting any better. We regularly have to close up the house because of the odour, at 10.30 the other night we had to do it.

Mr Fairfax continued: “Representatives from Collex (the original proponents) stood here in this very hall and told us that there would be no odour. The Woodlawn Waste Management Facility Environmental Impact Statement, dated 1999, stated that odour would not be experienced in the surrounding area.”

“They started and it wasn’t long after that we started getting the odour. This isn’t a new problem, it’s an ongoing problem,” he said.

Goulburn Mulwaree Councillors Geoff Peterson and Denzil Sturgiss also addressed the odour issue.

“I have lived in this area all my life. I managed a farm around Woodlawn for 18 years so I am fully aware of what happens in that area and how it operates and my biggest concern, and I believe the entire district’s biggest concern, is the odour,” Cr Sturgiss told the meeting.

“…Woodlawn has done a wonderful job. They paid out all of the workers entitlements, they are going to rehab the entire area and they put money back into the community through the Veolia Mulwaree Trust. I haven’t got a problem with any of that, what I do have a problem with though is the odour.

“It says on page 19 of the (Director General’s) report that Veolia will maintain their established odour incident management system – that’s not working … for five years they have been telling us they are going to fix the odour problem.

“There was a leachate dam so they fixed that but we still have an odour problem. They fix all of these things but we still have an odour problem and as late as five to eight on Monday morning, I was coming into town with my son and we had to turn the air conditioner off as we came over the hill on this side of the motel.

“The smell really wanted to make you sick and when we got into town, down near the police station, the smell was even worse. Now it is not acceptable to think that the local community have to put up with that … it’s is not acceptable for one minute! Other landfills in Sydney can control their odour, why can’t we?”

Council’s Director of Planning and Community Service Chris Stewart also made a submission.

“Council’s principal concern relates to the impact of the project on the people of Tarago,” Mr Stewart said.

He questioned the department’s recommendation to instigate an audit prior to the extended operations commencing and every three years after.

“Council questions why such an important issue is being left to a third report post issue of any consent?

“Council also feels that the review every three years is not frequent enough and needs to be done more frequently.

“I’m sure that the residents of Tarago would expect the odour to be of an acceptable level and nothing higher than that.”

He also cited a number of other unresolved issues including traffic, road safety, rehabilitation of the site, flooding, leachate management, vermin and pest control and the need for Section 94 payments to be delivered for the maintenance of roads.

Tarago resident Peter Mullins accused the state government of political ineptitude during his submission, saying the local community was now being used as a scapegoat for a bad policy.

“The NSW state government has had 20 year to implement a sustainable waste management strategy and their failure to do so has put this community in the situation it is in,” he said.

“According to the (Director General’s) report, both the department and Veolia view themselves as a long term, large scale waste repository for NSW and that was never the proposal put to this community. At no stage was this community ever led to believe that it would become the major prospective landfill area for NSW, even for a short amount of time, so being labeled as the rubbish tip for NSW is completely unacceptable.

“The continuation of Woodlawn acts as a positive distraction to the NSW Government and Councils having to find a long term sustainable solution to rubbish. So, actually approving the increased rubbish flow here would act as an incentive for the NSW Government to continue doing nothing and that is unacceptable.”

A number of residents were disgruntled by the PAC’s decision to hold the community consultation meeting at such an inconvenient time.

“You can’t have public consultation if it is at 9.30 in the morning during a working week,” one man said.

“I feel that if you were fair dinkum about getting the public’s opinion, you would have held the meeting at half past seven at night or on a Saturday or a Sunday… that’s not proper public consultation.”

A PAC spokesperson said it was a fair comment.

They also stated that they have never run into this problem in regional areas before but now that the issue had been raised with them they would take it on board and not run another one in a regional area without giving people ample opportunity to attend.

He also said there were a number of issues raised during the meeting that they would need to look into more closely before making a decision.

A decision is not expected until at least March 10, perhaps even later.