Watchdog’s piggery reply leaves a bad odour

[|T] he Department of Environment Regulation tells the public it “works with business owners, community, consultants, industry and other representatives to prevent, control and abate pollution”.

The reality for the community around a smelly and polluting piggery in West Pinjarra is completely different.

Last Wednesday’s column noted the department is considering an application by the foreign-owned and export-oriented GD Pork to more than double the capacity of its 3100-pig operation in Sutters Lane.

The neighbours rightly question why a business should be allowed to expand when by its own admission it is already polluting the groundwater that flows directly into the nearby Peel-Harvey estuary.

And they have lost patience with DER, the Murray Shire Council %and GD Pork for failing to take %action about a stench so bad it made one local resident vomit when she went outside.

The wheels of government often don’t move quickly and those at DER were grinding on their bearings last week when I submitted 14 questions at noon on Monday.

Despite more than 24 hours notice, DER missed the deadline for publication — even though they were given three extra hours leeway.

GD Pork has published two environmental management plans since it announced in 2013 it wants to expand the West Pinjarra operation, claiming in both that no complaints had been lodged with DER.

But the department last week finally confirmed it had received 53 complaints from seven people over the past 12 months, 49 regarding odour. Residents say they’ve lodged many more.

“While investigations have been unable to substantiate odour complaints, the GD Pork facility% will continue to be monitored by %the department as part of its compliance and enforcement activities,” DER said.

How DER records complaints was criticised by Labor MP Chris Tallentire last year and an email exchange between one officer and piggery neighbour Joanne Fowler throws light on that.

“I made a complaint directly to you about unreasonable odour on a Monday afternoon in April just prior to Easter,” Fowler wrote last August.

“Your prompt response to investigate the likely cause via telephone calls discovered that the most probable cause was pig manure from the GD Pork premises being spread on a paddock adjacent to the piggery.

“You told me that the piggery initially denied that any out of the ordinary routine activities had taken place on that day, but subsequently identified the manure spreading as the likely cause.”

Importantly, when the officer responded to Fowler’s email, none of those recorded details was contested.

However, the investigations team was still unable to substantiate the complaint.

DER says whether an odour was unreasonable — which is the test for a breach of the company’s licence — is “required to be assessed by an accredited person, trained as an odour assessor”.

Since last August, the stench in the area had been assessed by DER’s officers on 12 [|separate] occasions.

DER was unable to explain why GD Pork had not amended its EMP to correct the statement it had received no complaints. I asked about the company’s statement that increasing nutrient levels in three on-site monitoring bores meant the effluent ponds had reached their “optimum lifespan”.

Q: Given the level of existing contamination of the underground water in a highly sensitive area of the Peel-Harvey catchment, is GD Pork responsible for any remediation work before it can expand further or if the works expansion application is not approved?

A: The site was reported as a known or suspected contaminated site under the Contaminated Sites Act 2003 in November 2014. DER is awaiting additional information regarding groundwater quality before determining the appropriate classification for the site in consultation with the Department of Health.

The department confirmed GD Pork had never been found to have breached its licence, even though a site inspection last August identified “two potential non-compliances”, one of them “the location of a carcass burial relative to site drainage”.

As evidence of this department’s mindset, DER refers to both as “alleged” technical breaches and, extraordinarily, it sees the proposed expansion as a way of handling %them.

“No enforcement action was taken because the alleged technical breaches were to be subject to ongoing licence management, which will be considered as part of the works approval process,” it said.

DER says its target timeframe for assessing a works approval application is 60 days.

Despite GD Pork lodging its application in October 2013, DER says it was still receiving additional supporting information from the company on January 19. It hopes to make a decision by June 30.