CLEANAWAY has dumped plans for a compost facility at Gerogery.
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The company has chosen an alternative site for the $8 million organics composting facility near the Howlong tip and sewerage treatment plant north of the township.
Cleanaway is expected to lodge a development application with Federation Council in November for the facility which the company previously hoped to build on farmland near the Five Mates Bridge south of Gerogery.
Confirmation of an alternative site brings to an end a saga which ended up in the NSW Land and Environment Court almost two years ago.
Cleanaway lost an appeal against a decision by a joint regional planning panel to prevent the compost facility being built at Gerogery and opposition also from Greater Hume Shire.
At the time of the appeal outcome, Cleanaway vowed to press on at the original site and address "routine technical matters" raised by the court.
Cleanaway national project manager Mathew Kiervan said the proposed new site had the backing of Federation Council which owns the Howlong tip site.
“We’ve been working with the Federation Council on our first phase of due diligence in selecting this site," he said.
"We applied air quality, noise and traffic measures and have completed some initial ecological considerations as well.”
A joint regional planning panel would again assess the development application for the project due to its price tag being higher than $5 million.
Cleanaway started talks this week with neighbouring land owners.
The compost facility, if approved, will process 20,000 tonnes of composting per year via six covered wind rows with a further 15,000 tonnes which will be decontaminated on site then sent to a secondary site for processing.
The present organic waste collected in the Albury, Wodonga, Corowa and Indigo council areas presently is being transported to Wagga.
“The physical size of this site is smaller than the original application made for Gerogery, but it still gives us an effective growth margin, while effectively meeting air, quality, noise and traffic measures,” Mr Kiervan said.
Grease trap waste won't be processed at the proposed Howlong site which was originally intended to happen at Gerogery.
The facility is expected to create four jobs when completed with Cleanaway planning to open an office in Howlong where residents can view the development application when lodged.
A community reference group will also be established.
Eight other options were explored before Cleanaway settled on the Howlong location.