A CONTROVERSIAL composting plant earmarked for Howlong should be housed at Albury’s tip and run by the city’s council.
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That’s what Albury councillor Darren Cameron told a Howlong community group protesting against the plan.
“The best option is that it goes to the Albury landfill,” Mr Cameron told the objectors, stressing he was speaking as a Labor Party official rather than councillor.
“People in Albury are going to flay me over this, but it (compost) does go there now.
“It just makes perfect sense to me.”
Mr Cameron’s comments came as he sat alongside fellow Labor member and NSW opposition local government spokesman Peter Primrose at a meeting with the group.
“There’s no reason why Albury City Council can’t build and operate its own composting plant,” he said.
“I think a high-grade facility operated by Albury in Albury would be a solution.”
Cleanaway, the waste company proposing the Howlong plant, has a contract with Albury Council to build the centre by this July.
Mr Cameron said he believed that would not eventuate and it gave the opportunity for Albury Council to act unilaterally.
He told The Border Mail the council had a “moral responsibility” to deal with compost since it “generated the problem”.
“The Albury operation run by ourselves after investment by ourselves enables greater control over the facility and much better quality,” Mr Cameron said.
“It gives us control over the end product, we can sell it and provide some to residents for household use.”
Mr Cameron said composting akin to what would occur at Howlong had been done at Albury tip recently.
“People will say ‘oh my God, Cameron is going to cause us to have a pong in Albury’, well it’s exactly the same thing we’ve had for two years,” he said.
Albury councillors will meet the Howlong community group on April 28.
Of the compost bound for Howlong, Albury would have 45 per cent, Wodonga 35, Indigo 12 and Federation 8.