Cobargo clean up concerns

Thursday, 20 February, 2020

You and your community have a lot to consider and tackle at the moment. Together we are working through those issues.

Bega Valley Shire Council has been meeting with the Cobargo community around the future use of the Cobargo Tip/Landfill site as a place to safely dispose of asbestos contaminated material stemming from this summer’s bushfires.

Understandably there are questions and concerns being expressed by members of the community. At our most recent community meeting we made a commitment to come back to Cobargo this week (Feb 17 to 21) to better facilitate that ongoing conversation.

We have been unable to do that so far but remain committed to meeting with the community in the very near future to update residents on the roll out of the clean up and waste disposal process.

We want to convene that meeting with our partners in this work, the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA), Public Works and SafeWork NSW. We are continuing to work with those agencies to pin down a meeting time, at which point we will invite the community along.

We want that time to be productive for all involved and so appreciate the patience of the community while we look to create that opportunity in the near future.

To date Council has been working through a process that is being overseen and directed by those NSW Government agencies. Final signoff from the EPA is needed before the site can be reactivated. That approval is not yet in place.

Works have been undertaken recently to remediate the impact of the Badja Forest Fire on the tip, noting that there is a history of asbestos at the site.        

Other options for future asbestos disposal have and are still being considered, including trucking the asbestos out of our Shire, creating new sites and expanding other existing waste sites. Establishing a new landfill site would take significantly longer than mobilising a site that already has approvals in place.

In the meantime, Council has provided more information about the current proposal on its website, click here to learn more.

Thank you for the role you are playing in your community. While accepting that there are challenges and differences at difficult times like this we stand together in the effort to rebuild local lives and communities.

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