Lucas Heights Waste Facilities Expansion
At a glance
Suez was seeking planning and environmental approvals to expand its Lucas Heights landfill, in southern Sydney.
With the recent closure of Eastern Creek, this is the last remaining putrescible landfill site within the Sydney basin. Extending its life by an additional 13 years significantly benefits Sydney and NSW.
Suez engaged GHD's environmental specialists to assist with the project.
The challenge for the project was that some parts of the current site had settled over the years, and had insufficient grade for stormwater runoff. Increasing the site slopes is necessary to reduce potential leachate generation from infiltration into the landfilled waste.
One of the unique features of the project is that the site is being re-profiled using waste rather than importing soil. This provides sufficient revenue to funding the reprofiling and final capping and closure works. The site will now be available for waste management until 2038. Capping and progressive closure will create parklands over the entire site after 2038.
The project also included gaining approval for relocation of the current garden organics processing facility and upgrading it with new technology. A new 200,000 tpa alternative waste technology facility to treat municipal and commercial wastes from the Sydney metropolitan area has also been approved.
With GHD's assistance, the project gained approval within a two-year period, which is a short timeframe for such a major project.