Tara Murray
Noise from the clean-up of hot spot fires at the Kealba Landfill will need to be decreased following a new notice issued by the Environment Protection Authority.
The Barro Group was issued with the notice from the EPA earlier this month.
An EPA spokesperson said the notice was issued under a new environmental law -the general environmental duty,- that requires all duty holders to take practicable measures to prevent noise pollution.
Under this notice, Barro Group must review and put in place further controls to prevent or reduce noise from clean-up works near street level at the landfill.
Barro has until October 6 to comply.
The noise coming from the site is one of the major issues residents have been voicing concerns about.
The notice is the latest in a long line of notices issued by the EPA to the Barro Group since the hot spots started in late 2019.
Currently, the Barro Group and the EPA are engaged in legal action over a show cause notice issued in June.
The EPA issued a show cause clean-up notice to Barro in March calling for the three of the hotspots at the landfill to be extinguished by May and a fourth one by the end of July.
The EPA served a notice on Barro at the end of June, asking it to show cause why its licence to operate at the site should not be suspended after the first deadline wasn’t met.
In July, Barro commenced legal action in the Supreme Court regarding the clean-up notice.
A directions hearing was set down for August 18. Barro’s Steve Murphy said at the last community meeting that the hearing hadn’t gone ahead due to the parties agreeing on a timeline to share information.
