Newcastle council says the $60 million expansion of the Summerhill Waste Management Centre could see its life extended well beyond another 30 years.
A meeting of the Joint Regional Planning Panel approved the proposal yesterday.
Council’s manager of commercial enterprise services, Daniel Ballantyne, says the additional landfill cells will now allow it to take domestic waste from other council areas.
“The capacity for the centre to receive waste has been increased to 362,000 tonnes,” he said.
“The centre can now receive domestic waste from outside the local government area.
“In fact it’s quite possible that through resource recovery and waste minimisation that Summerhill as a resource could continue for a lot longer than that.
“If we were to improve our processes and reduce waste to landfill, Summerhill could operate for a lot longer.”
