The illegal dumping of household goods, rubbish and green waste is causing ongoing problems for forestry companies and councils, but new legislation coming into effect in South Australia from next year will give greater powers to councils and the public to help track down those responsible. Source: ABC South East
Green Triangle Forest Products (GTFP) operations supervisor Bevan Lipscombe is standing in the middle of a pine plantation at Kongorong, where a plant normally found in backyards and garden beds has grown wild across large areas of the plantation.
The large patch of Dolichos pea, entwined up to 20 metres high on some of the mature trees, would have started out as a small cutting in the midst of a pile of green waste dumped in the forest.
GTFP, which grows and manages 24,000 hectares of plantation in southeast South Australia and south-west Victoria, is paying tens of thousands of dollars each year to clean up other people’s rubbish, dumped illegally throughout their plantations.
But the problem of removing and controlling the spread of invasive plant species introduced in piles of green waste is costing the company far more.
“One of the big issues for us that people would think is quite innocuous is green waste,” GTFP managing director Laurie Hein said.
“Sometimes it contains exotic species such as bamboos and cactus and a number of others.
“We’re spending many, many tens of thousands of dollars trying to, in some cases, hand remove some of these, and spraying.
“It’s creating quite significant issues for us and in some cases affecting the viability of growing commercial crops.”
In the company’s plantations, Mr Lipscombe has seen cases where the ornamental Dolichos pea has smothered young trees and stopped their growth, with the creeping vine stopping sunlight from reaching them.
Meanwhile, Western Cape bridal creeper has grown so invasively in some areas that GTFP has had to pay people to walk along rows of affected forest and dig the roots out.
“Those exotic species, when they are put in a forest environment, they can spread quite rapidly, and birds and animals can move stuff quite quickly,” Mr Hein said.
“We have to stay constantly on top of it and that’s proving increasingly difficult all the time.” “Kitchen sinks, motorbikes, underwear, cars, power tools, bait fridges. You name it, I’ve seen it in a forest,” Mr Lipscombe said.
“I think people think ‘Out of sight, out of mind’.”
In a dumping hotspot in a Caroline forest, half a dozen individual piles sit metres apart from each other.
There are kids’ bikes, vacuum cleaners, power tools, tins of paint, bursting bags of rubbish, and even an entire swimming pool liner.
Mr Lipscombe said he was disgusted by what was thrown out, given much of it could be donated to charity or salvaged. But instead, it will sit in the forests, sometimes for months or even years before staff can get to it.
“We’re not keeping up with the amount of rubbish being dumped in the forests,” Mr Hein said. “Being such a very large area that we own and manage, it’s quite challenging to monitor it.
“We do try to remove as much as we possibly can, but it can be months before we get to it.”
These piles will eventually be picked up by staff or contractors, separated out and taken to Grant District Council’s waste transfer station, costing GTFP hundreds or potentially thousands of dollars at a time.
Costs aside, Mr Hein said the company’s staff were also put at risk by what people were deciding to dump.
Frontline forestry staff are now equipped with sharps boxes and heavy leather gloves in case they come across syringes dumped amongst nappies and household waste.
Over the past few years, staff have also come across piles of dumped asbestos, and have had to pay licensed contractors to come in and remove it.
“That costs a considerable amount of money to remove, but it’s really about the danger it presents to our people,” Mr Hein said.
The company has warning signs up at the edge of plantations, surveillance cameras in their plantations, and also plans on installing dash cams in forestry vehicles.
Another risk to staff is actually coming across an illegal dumper in the middle of the act, which has happened several times.
“Unfortunately these days, it’s becoming a lot more high-risk to approach people and start to gather details,” Mr Hein said.
“The dash cam will aid us in that regard. It reduces the risk and we will have a visual record of incidents.”
“It’s tiny, isn’t it?” said Dale Millar, holding the newest tool in his kit, a motion-activated HD camera smaller than his thumbnail. In the next few weeks, it will be used to catch out illegal dumpers.
Mr Millar, a Grant District Council community ranger, is working with southeast forest companies, and often calls to report cases of illegal dumping in their plantations on his turf.
As an ex-policeman, his unorthodox methods of catching illegal dumpers have led him to the doorsteps of several people who have admitted to illegally dumping rubbish, but not as many as he would like.
“It’s getting harder to catch them, and it’s taking more and more time and resources,” he said. “We have two community rangers to cover 190,477 hectares.”
Mr Millar is unashamed about his enthusiasm for the job. He will fossick through piles of dumped waste looking for identifying information, and even search through Facebook profiles to find the people responsible.
In one pile dumped last week at Wandilo, he found a speeding ticket with the person’s name on it.
“It’s brazen and frustrating,” he said.
Satisfaction is finding someone and making them go back and pick up their rubbish, and he encourages the public to report any incidents of illegal dumping to the council.
“If somebody sends me a picture of the person in the act or a vehicle, I can send them a fine or take them to court,” he said. “These people are dumping in plain view. Filth, it’s just filth.”
Glenburnie farmer John Osman has chased down illegal dumpers in the forest plantation bordering his property, saying he is sick and tired of people dumping loads of rubbish and building waste.
“Three or four times, I’ve chased people out of there,” he said. “Caught them right in the act and they say ‘Oh, I’m looking for the tip’. I tell them to piss off.”
Once, he chased a man driving a trailer load of goods along a pine break for several hundred metres.
“Once he saw I was after him, he was going so quick he started losing bits of iron and rubbish off the back.
“When I caught up to him, he said, ‘I’m trying to find the highway’. I said to him ‘Well it’s not bloody here’.
“They haven’t stopped. It’s an ongoing thing.”
New legislation coming into force from February 1 will give councils and the public greater powers when it comes to spotting and prosecuting people who choose to illegally dump rubbish.
The Local Nuisance and Litter Control Act 2016 was passed in May, and will allow for public reporting of illegal dumping by associating an alleged offence to a vehicle’s registered owner.
EPA executive director of operations Andrew Wood said if people saw illegal dumping, they could record number plate information.
“The council will then follow that up and try to find the owner of the vehicle, whereas in the past, that’s not been possible,” he said.
“The public can be involved in the policing of their own community a little bit more, and help their local councils.”
The act will also increase fines from just over $300 to more than $1000. But the penalty for dumping asbestos is far greater — as much as $250,000 and two years in jail, depending on the severity of the case.
Mr Wood said the new legislation should act as a deterrent and help decrease the number of incidents.
“It’s very difficult to completely stop illegal dumping. It’s almost a social thing where people think ‘Out of sight, out of mind, I’ll just drop this stuff and drive away’,” he said. “If people start to get caught and fined more heavily, it should help.”
Mr Hein believes bigger fines will act as a deterrent.
“The risk of fines and having more punitive measures in place is likely to bring about a better outcome,” he said.
“We need the legislation and the means to be able to support taking action against those who are illegally dumping, so we can have some teeth and really look to enforce it.
“We’re fighting an uphill battle here.”
