Cleanaway has reassured residents near its proposed Erskine Park Waste Transfer Station with plans to ensure that environmental controls go beyond compliance requirements.
The plans for the Erskine Park facility, which is about 40km west of Sydney CBD, were unveiled at a community meeting on Monday (12 October). Cleanaway updated the proposals in response to local residents’ concerns and will implement measures that will control any potential odour in line with Australian best practice standards.
NSW General Manager David Clancy said the main aim was to ensure there was no adverse impact on the local community.
“We have been in Erskine Park for more than 18 years, and this new project will ensure that we remain here, bolstering employment, boosting the local economy and providing a vital service,” said Mr Clancy.
“This is the reason we have set ourselves a ‘design standard’ with regard to odour control that goes above and beyond what’s required by law.”
The regulation ‘compliance standard’ allowed for odour limits to be exceeded for a small percentage of the operating time. Mr Clancy said that Cleanaway recognised that this approach was not acceptable to the community, so has taken steps to address it.
Cleanaway highlighted with the community some key points under its updated project proposals to strengthen environmental controls, including:
- By fully enclosing the building and transferring waste off site each day, odour from the facility will be contained well within the industrial area and not exceed the regulation ‘compliance standard’ at any residential locations.
- Cleanaway has set itself a higher ‘design standard’ to ensure odour limits won’t be exceeded.
- The company will use monitoring within the first 12 months of operation to validate odour modelling predictions and to ensure that all odour management measures achieve its stated objective. This will be subject to an independent audit to be approved by the Department of Planning & Environment and EPA.
More information on the proposed project is available on the Transpacific Cleanaway website.