Whytes Gully Landfill

Our city's waste goes to Wollongong Waste and Resource Recovery Park – also known as Whytes Gully. We're working in stages on a long term project to make sure this site can keep being used in the future.

We need to ensure this site meets our community's expectations, and the requirements of legislation, policies and strategies set by the Australian Government, NSW Government and Council.

This is important to:

Provide landfill space for our city's general waste.
Allow us to consider and/or introduce new facilities for handling waste. This could include finding new ways to treat waste and recover materials.
Reduce our waste management footprint and impact on the environment by extending the life of the landfill.
Make sure the site continues to be suitable for its use as a landfill. This includes meeting the needs of the surrounding area so it can be used now and in the future.

In 2012, Council lodged a major project application (project application number 11_0094) for this project under Part 3A of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979.

As part of that application, we prepared an Environmental Assessment (EA) which was submitted to the then NSW Department of Planning & Infrastructure (now NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure). The EA was also exhibited for community comment.

The project application was approved in March 2013, with conditions put in place. You can read the EA and conditions of the approval on the NSW Planning Portal.

Overall, this project will provide around six million cubic metres of additional landfill capacity.

The key parts of the project will include:

New landfill cell construction (Stages 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B, 3 and 4)
New landfill cell operation (Stages 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B, 3 and 4)
Progressive landfill rehabilitation and revegetation of the finished landform
Surface water drains and surface water ponds
Leachate management infrastructure and ponds
Landfill gas extraction and flaring
Demolition of existing buildings
Construction of temporary and permanent roads.

We’ve recently just completed the construction of two new landfill cells and a new leachate storage pond. Works completed during the project included:

demolition of roads, drainage infrastructure and minor structures
a new haul road (finished in early 2017)
bulk earthworks and vegetation removal
installing a new leachate storage pond, sumps and pipework
new landfill gas management system to collect and drain landfill gas to our existing system
installing engineered lining to allow the containment of waste

We've been placing waste in these new cells, after the Environment Protection Agency gave their approval in early 2019.