Their noses soon noticed

By Kath Gannaway
An agreement was reached on 26 August which saw all permits for the composting of green waste by Australian Native Landscapes cancelled.
A permit for a green waste transfer station on the Maroondah Highway site was first issued in July 2004 to LeastWaste.
In 2005 the then Minister for Environment granted LeastWaste permission to operate a contract taking in green waste from five councils – Yarra Ranges, Maroondah, Knox, Manningham and Whitehorse.
Delivery of the first green waste began in February 2006 and there were great expectations that the site now operated by ANL would benefit the entire Yarra Ranges Shire.
Yarra Ranges councillor Len Cox urged residents to embrace the model which he said would turn the more than 3000 tonnes of green waste each month into a valuable garden product for the wider community.
In September 2006 Mrs Rowlands sent of the first of the 793 emails to Yarra Ranges Council complaining about the stench coming from the site.
She was not alone.
Complaints poured into the Environment Protection Authority and the council and community and protest meetings were held to lobby for action. The Smell Abatement Action Group was formed with Mr King as spokesman.
Councillors Tim Heenan and Jeanette McRae successfully moved a motion to audit the facility and to apply to VCAT for a planning permit enforcement order on Condition No 14 relating to odour from the site.
The next five years saw Yarra Ranges Council and the EPA battling ANL throught VCAT– the council wanting to revoke all permits and the EPA refusing to issue a licence.
Mr King said the process took a personal cost on himself and many others.
“It’s been six years of stress and worry and concern about health problems for residents of Lilydale and Coldstream,” he said.
He said families had moved out, rather than put up with the stench that meant they had to isolate themselves in their homes at times.
“At one stage there were complaints to the EPA stating it (the smell) was interfering with the lives of people over a 100 square kilometre area,” Mr King said.
“With the wind flow in the Yarra Valley you simply can’t have that sort of open air composting on that scale.”
He said there was a strong feeling among residents also that there was a bigger political will to see the facility succeed.
“VCAT wanted it to go on, and that’s why we had months after month of mediation, and non-decisions,” he said.
“All along it was felt there was background political pressure. It was a green initative and people wanted it go ahead.
“I, and others, still say it was a great idea, but in the wrong spot.”
Mrs Rowlands said she believed not enough investigation or research was done by Yarra Ranges Council before the original permit was issued for what she said was an experimental operation.
“Throughout this saga we did our homework and came up with all the answers to the questions which would have sounded alarm bells, but no-one did that groundwork,” she said.
“That was a very costly mistake and it should be looked at,” she said.
Mrs Rowlands said she believed Yarra Ranges Council did the right thing in not reissuing the planning permit which led in part to the lengthy actions in VCAT.
“If you give a permit and the conditions are not adhered to you should have the right to revoke it,” she said.
“But they (ANL) have the right to go to VCAT.
“These legal by-laws should be so well set out, so well written that they are indisputable,” she said.
“Condition 14 said there should be no odour from the site and there was. That was indisputable – it was an open and shut case.”