CMCOAG – Canning Melville Community Odour Action Group

City of Rockingham Minutes – SMRC RRRC WCF Odour Issue – 27 April 2011

1. Purpose of Report

This report seeks adoption of the July 2011 to June 2016 City of Rockingham Waste Strategy, which sets out a 5 year action plan with a 20 year vision to 2031. The details of the Strategy are provided as a separate document to this report.

2. Background

As part of the City’s integrated strategic planning, a strategic review has been undertaken on the City’s major business unit, its waste management service business, which includes the Millar Road Class 3 Landfill Facility.

Initially expressions of interest seeking interest from suitably qualified companies to undertake the strategic analysis of future waste management opportunities for the City of Rockingham towards the year 2031 were called, with nine (9) submissions received.

The panel undertook an initial evaluation of the submissions and shortlisted four (4) companies (this included Local, Eastern States & New Zealand companies) who were given the opportunity to present to the evaluation panel.

Following the presentations the two companies who received the highest weighted scores were invited to submit tender proposals.

From the Tender submissions, the City engaged GHD to undertake its Strategic Analysis of Future Waste Management Opportunities for the City with commencement following Easter 2010.

In support of the development of the Waste Strategy for the City of Rockingham, a confidential situational analysis was undertaken on the City’s waste management service delivery.

The Waste Strategy sets out a five year action plan/strategy with a twenty year vision that addresses the findings from the situational analysis. The Waste Strategy defines the strategic aims, articulates actions to ensure aims are fulfilled, describes the required outcome, documents the required financial resources, and defines both completion timeframes and responsibilities for each action.

Aim of the Waste Strategy
Local Governments in WA are facing significant challenges, opportunities, and uncertainties in terms of future waste management directions. Numerous scenarios could develop over the short and long term; this was evident during the preparation of the strategy where 3 significant developments delayed the finalisation of the strategy because of their potential impact on waste services, these being Carbon Tax/Pricing, Keralup, and Waste to Energy interest.

It is essential for the City of Rockingham to understand how it will take advantage of emerging opportunities and deal with current uncertainties to deliver improvements to its waste management services over the next five years.

Strategic Action Pillars
How the City currently does business in respect to our current waste management services was seen to be strong foundations to build the future direction. It was determined that 4 key elements were the strategic groupings to focus upon. The strategic aims are reported against these four strategic action pillars representing the key elements of the City’s waste management service delivery being:

• Waste Generation and Collection: covering waste generation from households, commercial and industrial activities, the City’s operations, and subsequent collection by the City;
• Waste processing and Recovery: covering Millar Road Facility and arrangements with third parties on the processing, recovery, and reuse of the City’s wastes;
• Strategic Waste partnerships: The City is seeking and considering waste management partnerships with Local and State Governments, community, private and industrial sectors;
• Periodic Reviews: Ensure the City’s waste management service delivery and facilities remain up-to-date and reflect changing circumstances and developments (e.g. policies, regulations, catchment areas, technologies).

The Waste Strategy is structured as follows:

• Section 1 ‘Introduction’ provides an introduction to the City’s Waste Strategy, including the methodology applied to arrive at the strategy;
• The key findings from the situational analysis undertaken on the City’s waste management service delivery are presented in Section 2 ‘Situational Analysis’.
• The business and regional context of the City’s waste management services and facilities, underpinning the Waste Strategy, are provided in Section 3 ‘Business and Regional Context’, including waste management vision and the key principles underpinning the Waste Strategy;
• Section 4 ‘Strategic Action Pillar #1: ‘Waste Generation and Collection’ outlines the City’s strategies for waste generation and collection, including KPI’s, targets, rationale and actions;
• The City’s strategies, KPI’s, targets and actions for waste processing and recovery, including the Millar Road Facility, are presented in Section 5 ‘Strategic Action Pillar #2: Waste Processing and Recovery’;
• Section 6 Strategic Action Pillar #3: ‘Strategic Waste partnerships’ provides strategies, KPI’s, targets and actions for the City to engage in strategic partnerships with the community State and Local Government, and the industrial sector;
• Recognising the changing and uncertain waste management environment in Western Australia, strategies for undertaking periodic reviews of key issues affecting the Waste Strategy are outlined in Section 7 ‘Strategic Action Pillar 34: Periodic Reviews’;
• Section 8 ‘Annual Action Plans’ presents action plans on an annual basis to deliver the waste strategies outlined in this document, including estimated costs, internal efforts, responsible person(s), and period;

The procedure for the periodic review and performance monitoring of the Waste Strategy is provided in Section 9 ‘Monitoring and Review’.

3. Details

The City’s Waste Strategy is based on the following key principles:

• Enable maximum flexibility for dealing with possible future waste management options available to the City;
• Minimise financial, operational, community, and environmental risks to the City, its residents, and the region;
• Maximise utilisation of the Millar Road Landfill and its equipment and facilities in the short and long term;
• Optimise capital and operational costs to the City, and maximise return-on-investment;
• Encourage development of diverse range of environmentally and socially responsible waste processing technologies in the region, available to the City;
• Pro-active, open, and ongoing engagement with the City’s stakeholders, including community, Local and State Government, and the industrial sector;
• Staged approach to the development of appropriate waste technologies at the Millar Road facility;
• Diversion from landfill of waste delivered to the Millar Road Facility through proven technologies which are low risk and pose low capital cost to the City;
• Seek relevant partnerships to progress the proposed waste processing concept for the Millar Road Facility;
• Strive for best-practice on waste management service delivery;
• Minimise potential impacts from implementation of carbon costs through cost-effective measures, while taking a responsible position on greenhouse gas mitigation; and
• Ensure long-term license to operate the Millar Road Facility.

The Millar Road Landfill Facility houses all the City’s waste facilities required to deliver its services. The quantities of materials delivered to the Millar Road facility shows that in 2008/09 a total of about 360,000 tonnes was delivered to the Millar Road Facility, including commercial and industrial waste (~63%), municipal waste (~32%), and building and demolition waste (~5%). This represents a significant increase over the last ten years. Based upon these percentages significant focus has been afforded to the largest volume area being commercial and industrial.

Therefore there appears to be no urgent need for the City to commit to an Alternative Waste Technology (AWT) for the processing of mixed residential waste. The City’s focus should rather be on landfill diversion of the large volume of commercial and industrial waste streams entering the Millar Road Facility through an integrated waste processing concept incorporating lower-cost, bestpractice and fit-for-purpose technologies which are socially and environmentally acceptable. The development of such a process will allow the City to significantly reduce waste disposal at the Millar
Road landfill, expand its waste management services over time, if desired, in partnership with Local Governments and the private sector. Key elements of the future proposed waste processing for City of Rockingham include;

• Stage 1: Construction and demolition waste sorting facility, including timber shredding;
• Stage 2a: Tunnel composting of separated residential and commercial green/organic waste;
• Stage 2b: Mechanical separation of kerbside mixed waste and commercial wet waste;
• Stage 3: Dirty Material Recycling Facility processing residential and commercial dry waste and residual waste from mechanical separation;
• Stage 4: Clean Material Recycling Facility processing source separated residential recyclables;
• Ongoing: Landfill of non-recoverable and residual wastes.

The City should initially expand its simple resource recovery operations at the Millar Road site to divert high volume dry wastes (mainly commercial and green waste) from landfill, rather than being involved in a higher cost and higher risk AWT facility;

Given the following uncertainties, City of Rockingham should be mindful not to lock itself into technologies (e.g. capital intensive AWT) which the City may regret in five years time:

• Developments and population expansion in Karnup;
• The implementation and level of a price on carbon;
• Development of emerging technologies in WA context;
• Enhanced corporate structures for Local Government ventures.

The City recognises the importance of its relationships with Local Government agencies and State Government, and its role to contribute to regional initiatives benefiting the wider community and region as a whole (e.g. dealing with wastes from natural events).

The strategy recommends that the City prepare an exit strategy and withdraw its membership from the Southern Metropolitan Regional Council (SMRC). For the future the City to assess all membership options with waste management organisations with a view to positioning the City in strong strategic alliances.

The proposed waste processing concept for the Millar Road Facility can be developed in partnership with Local Governments in the region. Except for Town of Kwinana, City of Rockingham’s adjacent Local Governments are members of Rivers Regional Council (Shire of Murray, City of Mandurah, and Shire of Serpentine Jarrahdale). Like the City, the Town of Kwinana does not participate in the SMRC’s Regional Resource Recovery Facility.

4. Implications to Consider

a. Consultation
Consultation was undertaken with Industry in the region including the Kwinana Industries Council (KIC) and with community representatives from Conservation of Rockingham Environment.

A four page overview of the Waste Strategy including all the recommendations and details on the key issues will be prepared to be available for the public & key stakeholders.

b. Consultation with Government Agencies
As part of the strategic analysis of the City’s waste management opportunities, consultation with the following stakeholders was undertaken with representatives from;

Town of Kwinana, City of Cockburn, City of Melville City of Canning, City of Gosnells, City of Armadale,

City of Mandurah, City of South Perth, Shire of Murray and the Shire of Serpentine Jarrahdale.

Southern Metropolitan Regional Council (SMRC), Rivers Regional Council (RRC)), Eastern Metropolitan Regional Council (EMRC).

Department of Environment & Conservation (DEC), Keep Australia Beautiful (KAB) & Western Australian Local Government Association (WALGA).

c. Strategic

This project addresses the Community’s Vision for the future and specifically the following Aspirations contained in the Community Plan March 2011:

Aspiration 11: Planning for population growth to ensure that future development and landuses contribute to a sustainable city that provides for a genuinely desirable lifestyle. Aspiration 12: Carbon footprint reduction and waste minimisation programs centred upon public awareness and the use of new technologies.

d. Policy
Nil

e. Financial
The City’s Business Plan 2011-2021 allocates funds to enable the staged implementation of the proposed waste processing concept. Prior to embarking on any of the proposed projects within the Strategy, a full business case will be presented on individual proposals to Council for consideration.

f. Legal and Statutory
An exit strategy needs to be developed for the withdrawal of membership from the SMRC. Legal advice has been received in this respect.

5. Comments

The Waste Strategy is fully supported, positioning the City to be able to manage the fast changing waste sector. The Strategy will enable the City to be well on the way to complying with the State’s aim for Zero Waste to Landfill by 2020 and prepares the City to meet the potential requirements of the impending release of the State’s Waste Strategy.

The Strategy will reduce waste to landfill, but will position the City to manage recyclables and develop a positive future income stream from these commodities.

The Waste Strategy conveys the technological, environmental, social, and economic direction to all stakeholders directly or indirectly involved or affected by the City’s waste management services and facilities.

Whilst waste-to-energy plants are being discussed within the region any future plant may utilise selected industrial by-products, and has potential to take waste streams from Local Governments. Should any of these projects gain approval the City should review the potential economic, technical, environmental, and social aspects of any proposed facility on its strategy.

The City has been a member of the SMRC for a long period of time, whilst it has been involved directly with some projects these have generally been smaller projects. The City has not been involved in the bigger capital intensive projects such as the Regional Resource Recovery (RRRC), Materials Recycling Facility (MRF) preferring on being a user who pays for the service.

This has enabled the City to be a user of the facilities but paying its way as it went, the City therefore has no large capital exposure to the projects. In respect to the MRF at the SMRC which burnt down, the City has a current user pays contract with the SMRC to provide recyclables for processing, this contract expires in July 2012 with an option to extend, due to the facility not being available the City has made other arrangements until such time it is rebuilt. The SMRC has large loan liabilities from its large capital expenditures; the City has no liability or exposure to this liability. The SMRC has dealt with issues relating to odour at its facility.

The Strategy recommendation to withdraw from the SMRC is fully supported; the City due to its location and having the Millar Road Landfill, is strategically placed to access other membership options with a wide variety of waste management organisations be they local government, regional councils or the private sector enabling it to be better positioned for strong strategic alliances. The future population growth for the region should also be taken into consideration before making future relationship decisions.

Delays in preparing the Strategy related to undertaking a comprehensive situational analysis before beginning the Strategy, allowing an additional 3 months for stakeholder consultation particularly for Local Government, waiting on the release of the State Waste Strategy, uncertainty with Carbon Pricing/Emissions Trading Schemes and the emergence of waste to energy projects with in the Kwinana Industrial Area.