Trashed site could cost pile of money

ONE of the most incredible aspects surrounding Lara’s highrisk waste site is just how it was allowed to operate for so long.

The first legal action against a business run by David McAuliffe, pictured right, was heard more than three-and-a-half years ago.

It was June 2015 when the growing mounds of waste on the Broderick Rd site had raised concerns at the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.

VCAT wanted to know how the debris — which had been collected since 2013 and was then estimated at costing between $8-12 million to clean up — would be removed.

Since then, the only thing that’s piled up quicker than the rubbish is the legal paperwork.

There’s been multiple trips to VCAT, council-initiated convictions in the Magistrates’ Court and fines from the Environment Protection Authority.

None of those interventions stopped the influx of waste. But then some of them didn’t even try.

There was no limit put on the volumes allowed on to the site, when VCAT defied the council’s protestations and issued a permit in 2016.

The spread of rubbish reached about 350,000 cubic metres before it was halted last year.

Just what is contained in the 12m-high piles of mixed waste, no one really knows.

At last estimation, it would take a lengthy two years and cost $99 million to rehabilitate the site.

That’s if a toxic fire, which authorities have labelled a “catastrophic” threat of burning for several weeks, doesn’t plunge the area into an environmental crisis.

EVEN as authorities circled last year, Mr McAuliffe was still drumming up business.

After the large 30,000-tonne fire at Coolaroo in July, the EPA was sharpening its gaze on highrisk recycling facilities.

The acrid smoke had barely cleared after that blaze, which burnt for 11 days and saw homes evacuated and businesses close, when C& D Recycling raised its prices.

Management wrote to clients on July 25, advising of a price hike from October.

“After careful consideration, it has been decided that an increase is required to facilitate the expanding operations that are being carried out within the organisation.”

Prices had been widely soaring across the country, with the recycling industry plunged into disarray by China’s ban on imported contaminated paper, cardboard and plastics.

While there was no further mention of the expansion plan, Mr McAuliffe has recently floated the eight-figure prospect of installing a gasification plant to convert the waste into energy.

But given a lack of investment in the business, and admissions of debts totalling more than $1 million, it was an impossible dream.

Within a fortnight of the proposed price hike, the council had issued its own edict, requiring fire prevention works on the Broderick Rd site.

The EPA also had a growing concern that there was no market plan to recycle the material and it would be abandoned.

It used beefed up new laws to call on the operator to stop accepting waste until it could meet compliance standards.

C &D Recycling lodged legal counterclaims through VCAT, aiming at dragging out the time frame.

Finally, on December 22, VCAT issued an interim enforcement order that ground the business to a halt.

No further waste could be brought on to the site and operational safety equipment, such as a water cart and dozers, should be on hand at all times.

The move cut off income and drove up expenses, forcing the operator into a corner.

“Basically we made a decision to close, because it just got that far out of control, with nowhere to go,” Mr McAuliffe said.

The waste might have stopped coming in, but none has gone out.

With a substantial tax office debt, C& D Recycling last week was made insolvent.

There are some in the industry who suspect that recycling might have been in the business name, but it was never part of the business plan.

A waste industry veteran estimated that more than $60 million had been taken in

disposal fees over the past few years.

He told the Geelong Advertiser that the threat of the site being abandoned was real.

“(Mr McAuliffe) has a history of walking away and moving on to the next project. I think it’s a disgrace.”

He also criticised those who had taken advantage of the cut-price rates — which were cheaper than council tip fees — for turning a blind eye to the rising problem.

He said anyone who had offloaded waste there should not be eligible to carry out a taxpayerfunded restoration of the six hectares of land.

“Whoever has used the site to dump their waste cheaply … should not be allowed to clean it up and get money on the way out of it.”

For what it’s worth, Mr McAuliffe said he had recycled about 25 per cent of the material that has come through his gates.

“If we were going to walk away from it, we would have walked away 12 months ago,” he said in June. HIS critics — of which there are many — say Mr McAuliffe won’t simply walk away.

While he spends his days on a 28m luxury yacht in Queenscliff Harbour, he could literally sail off into the sunset and leave behind the litany of problems he created.

But Mr McAuliffe has never fled Geelong before, despite numerous business ventures crashing and burning.

Controversy has followed him as far back as the early 1970s, when the Australia Day celebration organiser had a messy exit from the Shire of Corio.

He found further trouble with the City of Greater Geelong when he set up a childcare centre at Ariston House that the council eventually had to take over.

Mr McAuliffe was ordered to pay ANZ Bank more than $160,000 and was declared bankrupt in 1998.

He has, either voluntarily or by court order, wound up Little Ryrie St Townhouses, Barwon Wreckers, Central Recyclers and now C& D Recycling.

Despite all this activity, he somehow managed to convince then-council mayor Darryn Lyons and the Napthine state government to support a proposed $320 million venture he was involved in.

About a month before the 2014 state election, then-planning minister Matthew Guy fast-tracked approval for the Sustainable Farms proposal.

The pitch for Sustainable Farms was to create a waste-to-energy plant, which would be used to power hydroponic glasshouses growing a variety of produce.

But within a year of a media launch, the project had been abandoned. Like the Broderick Rd site, which has authorities and residents alike on edge, the best laid plans had been laid to waste.