Tara Murray
The Barro Group is hoping to have officially extinguished three of the hot spot fires at the Kealba Landfill in the first quarter of this year.
At the recent Barro community meeting, Barro’s Nino Frasca said there were continued positive signs surrounding hot spots two, three and four.
He said the heat signals surrounding those three hot spots strongly indicated they had been extinguished.
An independent auditor appointed by the Environmental Protection Authority has to sign off before they can officially be recorded as out.
Mr Frasca said this was likely to happen in the first quarter of this year.
Barro has previously said they were aiming to have hot spot one, the last hot spot, extinguished by the end of May.
Remediation work at the site was set to resume this week after the Christmas period, when work was halted and the site closed. Monitoring still occurred during this time.
Mr Frasca said the resumption of work had been hindered by several staff in isolation due to COVID-19 or being a close contact.
He said they had been able to do some other work on site in the couple of days they had been back.
“Once remediation works recommence, we’re focusing predominately on hot spot one,” he said.
When residents were asked about whether they smelt any odour coming from the site throughout the closure period, residents said it had been a lot better than in the past.
One resident said it had been a ‘blessing’ compared to what it had been in recent years and another said he only smelt it on one day.
The online community meetings are now held once a month.
