Bouquet for capping

Baw Baw Shire Council is to be commended for completing the Trafalgar tip rehabilitation project on its watch (‘Tip project not glamorous, but important’, (Gaz., 12/7).

I was a regular user of the tip in its later years and saw the pile of rubbish grow to its zenith; the abortive attempt to extend its operational life by constructing a containment dam; and the initial capping works.

The capped mound may not be glamorous but visually it’s a world away from those messy days, and ensures that continuing gaseous and effluent emissions are contained, collected and disposed of responsibly.

Burning off the collected gases may sound wasteful but effective utilisation would be impractical and uneconomic, and is environmentally beneficial because methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than is the carbon dioxide produced.

When the Trafalgar tip commenced, the Environment Protection Act (1970) was still six years away, and the secluded gully close to town doubtless seemed an ideal site.

For nearly 50 years, the citizens of Narracan and Baw Baw Shires enjoyed the benefit of lowcost rubbish disposal, so we should not think of the remediation costs as ‘a burden that was left to the shire to sort out’, but rather as a reminder that money spent now on minimising waste will be money saved in the future on transport to, and eventual rehabilitation of, distant landfill sites.

The core business of local government is said to be ‘rates, roads and rubbish’. The outgoing council may be remembered well for capping two of those in its final year! John Hart Warragul