July 19, 2023
More than two years after a public meeting with Maidenwell residents gave an enthusiastic go-ahead to upgrading the town’s waste transfer facility, work on the project now seems unlikely to start until next year.
At Wednesday’s general meeting, Councillors were told the project’s original estimated cost of $350,000 had blown out to as much as $685,000 since it was first scheduled in the Council’s 2020-21 Budget.
Officers said part of this cost blowout was due to rising construction costs but other contributing factors were the need to acquire land to move the facility away from the Kingaroy-Cooyar Road, and the avalanche of paperwork that accompanied the project, including obtaining DTMR approvals, permits to remove trees from the waste transfer facility’s new site and preparing a Development Approval.
Cr Kirstie Schumacher said she held grave concerns about the explosion in costs, and Cr Gavin Jones said he was deeply disappointed the project has taken much longer than originally planned.
However, he insisted that the new facility be enclosed with fencing and access controlled by PIN cards to prevent residents from Cooyar and other regions using the waste transfer station as a disposal point.
Officers told the meeting they had three options for waste collection bins at the facility: a “like-for-like” option that would install eight 3 cubic metre and two 2 cubic metre front lift bins, similar to those in use now, which would cap costs at around $460,000; or 10 and 27 cubic metre “roll on, roll off” bins that would increase costs to between $625,000 and $685,000.
They said the advantage of the higher-priced options was that the biggest bins would reduce the current twice-weekly waste collection service to once per week; and the collections could be undertaken by Council staff rather than J.J. Richards.
Councillors asked staff to review their plans for the site, and then bring them to August’s general meeting for a decision.
