Cocos Islands: waste incinerator near nation's best beach, Cossies

http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/western-australia/cocos-islands-waste-in...

John Flint, PerthNow

WA’s environmental regulator is embroiled in a controversy over the approval of a waste incinerator on the Cocos Islands, upwind of a beach recently voted the best in Australia.

The federal and WA governments have hailed beach clean ups that saw volunteers recently collect 50,000 pieces of marine debris, including 2999 plastic drink bottles and 3729 rubber thongs, that had washed up there.

The Marine Debris Project is funded by WA’s Department of Environment Regulation (DER) and the Commonwealth’s Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development. Volunteers from the Tangaroa Blue Foundation recently spent a week collecting debris on four islands.

But some locals are angry that the massive rubbish haul is being incinerated there posing health and environmental risks, rather than being shipped back to the mainland for proper disposal.

The DER has approved the incinerator, which will be used in future to burn all municipal waste on Home Island, one of the main islands in the Cocos group, 2,750 km north west of Perth. It has also approved the burner for the incineration of all medical waste on the island. The move has angered Australia’s National Toxics Network group.

“The community rely on groundwater as a drinking water source, and yet at only one-to-two metres below the surface it is at risk from incinerator pollution and the toxic ash residues,” NTN spokeswoman Jane Bremmer said.

“In addition, waste incinerators release air pollutants. Dioxins, furans heavy metals and nanoparticles have no safe levels of exposure and can adversely impact the pristine marine environment this community relies on for their livelihoods.”

The DER has acknowledged the most significant risks are contamination of groundwater through disposal of ash waste and air emissions. But the regulator said it was an improvement on the past practice of open air burning.

“The island has historically had waste disposal issues with a lack of suitable burial areas for putrescible waste and significant off-island waste transport costs,” a spokeswoman said.” Waste was previously disposed of by open burning onsite.”

With the incinerator not yet fully commissioned, open air burning on Home Island occurred as recently as April 6.

Cocos resident Gerald Short, who wants to establish an eco-resort on West Island said it was “mind-boggling” that no environmental impact assessment had been carried out for the incinerator, as would occur for a new incinerator in WA. He said he and other residents were also concerned there was no requirement for emissions monitoring in the licence.

“I am frankly disgusted that we are acting like a third world nation here with our waste when we have the education, knowledge and frankly, the laws that require us to act differently,” he said.

“The Commonwealth has a responsibility to assist us to make this happen ...The (Shire of Cocos Islands) can easily get asbestos removed from the island. So this is something that obviously can be addressed.

“There is no excuse for this to be happening now, with recently voted Australia’s best beach, Cossies beach, downwind of the incinerator.”

“Can you do this anywhere else in Australia? I'm just aghast ...The concept of having an eco-resort and an incinerator burning plastics, they don't go together — they can't co-exist.”

Mr Short said that some of the rubbish haul collected by the volunteers was burnt in the open on West Island.

“I was personally impacted by the fumes generated from this open plastic burning, as were others on the island with sore throats and chest aches for several days afterwards,” wrote Mr Short in a letter to federal Minister for Regional Development Fiona Nash.

The Cocos Islands, are a group of 27 coral islands that form two atolls, have a population of about 600 people who live on Home Island and West Island. The islands offer world class diving, snorkelling and fishing for 4000 tourists who visit every year. Unfortunately, the windward side of the islands collect marine debris from all over the world.

Shire chief executive Aaron Bowman said the council did its best to manage waste with very limited resources and it was time for people to “get real.”

“To get anything off Cocos is $12,500 for a 20 foot container,” he said.

“As a shire, in the last two and half years we have spent over $500,000 on improvements for waste management. We only get $335,000 a year on average for rates.

“Before we got the incinerator, it was open burning ...If I could get waste back to Australia and someone would pay for it, I would be the first person to jump on it.

“The shire has now got an indoor undercover recycling centre (on West Island) at huge cost. We fully recycle and then use our glass. Aluminium cans are now being recycled.”

He said there was no recycling on Home Island because it cost too much money to ferry waste to West Island.

“I wish I could do a lot of things out here on Cocos, but it all comes down to what we can do with the money we get. We need to try and get car batteries off the island (as well),” he added.

“I am getting pissed off because I have worked my butt off to address some of these problems and DER would be the first to admit that the improvements we have made are by far more than any other local government in WA. It's easy on the mainland, very easy on the mainland.”

Mr Bowman also attacked clean up volunteers who had a problem with the incinerator. “They all came on a plane, so there's a pollution stream there. They pick up two tonnes of waste to feel good and then complain that we have to put it in an incinerator to get rid of it. What do want us to do with it?”

Ms Bremmer said the islands could use non-combustion technology to dispose of waste that couldn’t be recycled or was too costly to be moved to the mainland. She said the toxic ash also presented a risk to the fragile marine environment.

The DER said the incinerator posed no risk to drinking water supplies.

“Waste ash is buried at the Home Island Transfer Station which is in an area that does not impact the freshwater lenses that serve as a back-up water supply for Home Island,” a spokeswoman said. “The main water supply for the community is sourced from seawater bores and treated by an advanced water treatment plant.”

The DER said the high temperatures stipulated in the incinerator licence minimised “the potential risk of pollutants in the emissions to air by destroying highly volatile chemical and synthetic waste.”

But Ms Bremmer said this was “nonsense”. “Persistent organic pollutants are generated mostly during the start-up and shut down of the plant, where you cannot control the temperatures,” she said. It would be hard to find any credible incinerator expert that would regard this incinerator as suitable for medical and industrial waste.”

Tangaroa Blue Foundation managing director Heidi Taylor said volunteers knew the waste was going to be incinerated.

"That was part of the planning process (for the clean up),” she said. “Unfortunately the islands have quarantine restrictions for what can be brought back to the mainland, so we can't dig out stuff from the soil or the beach and then bring that material, even if it is recyclable, back to the mainland because of quarantine legislation.

“The better way is not having to deal with the stuff in the first place. Why are these islands receiving pallet loads of plastic single use drink bottles that are then shrink wrapped with plastic wrapping ...why are they even being sent to the island when you can drink the tap water on Cocos, which is fine.”

"They can't deal with that waste, let alone the other waste coming from all over the planet washing up on their beaches as well.”

“I would say Cocos is far ahead of some of the other remote island communities as far as their recycling goes. But for the stuff that can't be recycled, what else should you do with it? It is a complex issue but we need to figure it out.”