A Kurri Kurri Waste recovery business wants to expand the processing capacity of its operation by 400 per cent, planning documents show.
Central Waste Station's Styles Street operation presently has a material throughput of 90,000 tonnes per annum of general solid waste. In addition, 30,000 tonnes of material is stored on site during the six days which it operates.
A scoping report lodged with the Department of Planning says the facility currently has to operate during reduced hours to avoid exceeding the annual throughput tonnage limit.
The business is seeking to increase material throughput of up to 450,000 tonnes per annum and increase on site storage to 40,000 tonnes.
Operating hours would increase to 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The scoping report says the development proposal aims to achieve greater volumes of resource recovery for the Hunter region and satisfy the demand for its services.
"The project will play an important role in achieving the national waste policy targets by diverting up to 382,500 tonnes per annum of waste (based on a target recovery rate of 85 per cent) from landfill to economically valuable uses," the report says.
The revised site will occupy 1, 8 and 10 Styles Street, Kurri, and 145 and 147 Mitchell Avenue.
The plant's operational processes would remain generally the same.
Some changes to the site layout are proposed to optimise operations and to allow further sorting and processing on site to increase the value of dispatched recovered materials.
Proposed changes include
- an adjustment to vehicle and pedestrian access and manoeuvring within the site
- demolition of redundant buildings on 8 Styles Street and 147 Mitchell Avenue
- construction of infrastructure including a processing building for further residual material, office, weighbridges and covered storage bays
- repurposing the existing workshop for use as a non-ferrous metals processing area
CWS also operates a waste transfer station at Pennant Street, Cardiff, and is establishing a waste transfer station at Glen Munro Road, Muswellbrook.
The transfer stations increase access to local markets and provide a pre-sorting and consolidation point for the collection of non-putrescible general solid waste from construction and demolition waste, commercial and industrial waste and municipal solid waste sources.
Once consolidated, wastes will be transferred to the Integrated Resource Recovery Centre at Kurri Kurri.
These transfer stations provide additional sources of material and improve the overall efficiency of CWS's operations, the scoping report says.
The waste from the transfer stations will be moved in bulk to the Kurri in articulated trucks with an average capacity of about 30 tonnes.
"As a greater portion of waste will be delivered to the IRRC in trucks with greater capacity, the proportional increase in the number of vehicles delivering waste to the site will be less than the proportional increase in the tonnage of waste accepted," the scoping report says.
