Max Westwood
Star Weekly is looking back on its best stories of 2024. This story was originally published in July and Star Weekly has chosen to share it again for readers to enjoy.
A petition with over 5000 signatures has been created in a bid to stop the development of the waste to energy facility in Wollert.
Cleanaway is proposing to build the Melbourne Energy and Resource Centre (MERC) at 510 Summerhill Drive, which would use up to 380,000 tonnes of waste material that would otherwise have gone to landfill.
The Environment Protection Authority (EPA) waste to energy process is forecast to generate approximately 46.3 megawatt (MW) gross of electricity, 4.7MW of which would be used to power the facility itself. The remainder of 41.6MW will be exported to the grid as base load electricity.
It said waste ash produced from the process would be treated at the facility to be used as an alternative construction product. Metals will be recovered from waste ash for recycling and sale.
Wollert resident Adriano Di Girolami said he was concerned about the possible health affects that the polluted air will have on such a populated area.
“It should not go where it is going. You have aged care … childcare centers, private residences and a gated community down the road that it will wreck altogether,“ he said.
“Where they are proposing, less than four kilometres away they just put up 400-1000 townhouses.“
Fellow Wollert resident and creator of the petition Julie Ahmed is concerned about the effects the incinerator will have on the area and its residents. She said there is very little information available regarding the potential long-term health impacts of such facilities.
“So we feel that this is being pushed through without even hearing the concerns of local residents, nor looking at the evidence from overseas and the and the accumulative health effects and environmental effects,” she said
“The thing is, there’s still a large proportion of the community that are unaware [of the proposal], because we still find people every single day that do not know about it.
“I don’t think there is any other option here that we do. We will not stop unless it. It’s the whole proposal is scrapped.“
Cleanaway, in its online response to community submissions said the Summerhill Drive site was chosen following a review of 200 potential sites and is 1.4km from existing residential areas in Wollert and 1.2 km from future residential developments.
“The proposed waste-to-energy facility offers an appropriate and productive use of the land, which is already surrounded by several industrial facilities making it unsuitable for residential development,“ Cleanaway said.
It said a human health risk assessment (HHRA) identified no unacceptable risks to community health, noting that the risk of odour impacts was low.
The EPA said the application is under assessment.
