‘All sorts of bacteria’: floods have dumped a year’s worth of landfill on some NSW towns. Where will it go?

Heaps of ruined furniture, broken electricals and sodden, mould-breeding carpet represent the damage and heartbreak from last week’s inundation. The challenge now is what to do with it

In a large field by the Taree greyhound track stands a huge pile of waterlogged and mud-caked waste, pulled from houses and businesses inundated by last week’s massive floods.

Among the mound are couches, fridges and piles and piles of broken furniture.

The heap represents the heartache and damage of the floods – people’s treasured possessions and equipment they used to make their livelihoods. But it also presents a logistical challenge for the community: what to do with thousands of tonnes of ruined furniture, broken electricals, silt-filled kitchen units and sodden, mould-breeding carpet?

By the time the cleanup is done, an estimated 60,000 tonnes of waste generated by the floods will end up in landfill, says Paul De Szell, liveable communities director for MidCoast council, which includes Taree, Wingham and other flood-affected communities.

For context, De Szell says, the amount sent to landfill each year for the entire council area – which covers many communities not hit by the recent floods – is 50,000 to 60,000 tonnes.

“If you put a year of landfill in one month, the system doesn’t function.”

This is where the giant pile of waste at the Taree greyhound track comes in.

It is one of several temporary transfer stations set up to get flood waste off the streets, where residents are leaving it for kerbside collection, and away from residential areas altogether.

The waste is moved from the temporary stations by the NSW Public Works department to a larger site. There, the waste is sorted to recover and recycle as much as possible, and then moved out of the MidCoast local government area and put into landfill in surrounding areas.

In the first five days of recovery, about 18,000 cubic metres of flood debris were transported to landfills and temporary waste storage sites, according to the NSW Environment Protection Authority (EPA).

“NSW Public Works are looking after the large main site, they’ll take it out of the area at no cost to MidCoast council. We couldn’t handle the sheer volume of waste in the area,” says David Rees, the manager of waste services for the council.

This waste management plan, developed after the 2021 floods, was put into action last week.

As soon as the flood waters subsided, the council sent out nearly 70 heavy vehicles – excavators, bobcats, compact trucks and bogie tippers (dump trucks) – to collect waste left out on the kerbs in flood-hit towns.

“The main purpose is human health – to get stuff away from people’s properties, that has a huge impact on their mental health too,” Rees says. “We’ve already got the bulk of waste out of the Taree CBD and we’ll continue to do laps there to make sure it’s clear.”

“We’ve collected a lot of waste over the last week,” De Szell says. “We’ve focused on CBD areas in Taree and Wingham, those are essentially cleared and residential waste in Wingham is essentially cleared.

“But we go in a cycle: we know people will have to remove linings in buildings, carpets that will be wet and are going to have mould – we’ll go back to make sure every last bit of waste as a result of this flood is removed.”

While De Szell says it is likely to take months to remove all the waste, getting material out and away from homes as soon as possible is more urgent.

Authorities are “very conscious of the social impact and the psychological impact”, he says, as well as physical risks.

“[The waste] is wet, it starts to smell. There’s all sorts of bacteria that exists in that flood waste so it’s very important to get that waste off the ground as soon as possible.”

The EPA says one of its key priorities is the disposal of animal carcasses – 1,200 of which have been reported to the Animal and Agriculture hotline so far, with that number expected to grow significantly. The EPA says it is working closely with the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development to identify disposal sites.

Another of the challenges the waste management team faces is the volume of silt and mud swept into properties by the flood. De Szell says his team is still in discussions with the state government to figure out what to do with it.

“Our focus at the moment is taking material cleared out of houses so they can become habitable again.

“We don’t want to have an even greater housing crisis than we already have on the mid-coast. We want to have the houses cleared out, washed out, made safe so people can rebuild their lives.”

Cover photo:  Trucks unload rubbish and debris from the Taree floods at a temporary tip on Kanangra Drive, north of town. It is expected the cleanup effort in Taree will take weeks. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins/The Guardian