Sustainable Timber Tasmania has spent nearly $30,000 cleaning up a single illegal oil-dumping incident in the state’s north-west, as hazardous waste is increasingly abandoned on permanent timber production zone land across Tasmania. That is according to Suzette Weeding, general manager of conservation and land management at Sustainable Timber Tasmania, who confirmed the single recent incident accounted for almost the agency’s entire average annual clean-up bill across the past three financial years.
Petrochemicals, asbestos, tyres, vehicles and clinical waste are among the materials being dumped across the state’s permanent timber production zone, with the recent oil incident triggering a major containment operation in Tasmania’s north-west. Operational crews used absorbent materials to halt the spill spreading into soils, vegetation and drainage lines.
Illegal dumping has cost the agency an average of $39,000 a year to inspect, manage and remove across the past three financial years, with the recent oil dump accounting for almost $30,000 of that bill on its own. The single north-west incident leaves only a narrow gap between one event and an entire year’s typical caseload.
Weeding said the financial cost was only part of the picture, with crews diverted from regeneration and biodiversity work to deal with hazardous material on public land. “These incidents pose a serious risk to forest ecosystems, waterways and wildlife,” Weeding said.
Wood Central understands the agency manages around 800,000 hectares of permanent timber production zone land across Tasmania, under a framework set by the Forest Management Act 2013 and the Tasmanian Regional Forest Agreement. The cost of unlawful waste disposal currently falls on the public forest budget rather than on the offenders responsible.
Sustainable Timber Tasmania is working with Tasmania Police, the Environmental Protection Authority and other agencies to investigate the recent incident and deter further offending. The agency said each cleanup required specialist contractors and additional staff hours that were not built into routine operational planning.
It comes as Sustainable Timber Tasmania moves through Dean Kearney’s first full year as chief executive, with the 25-year forestry veteran inheriting a brief that covers the modernisation of public-forest management alongside a rising illegal-dumping caseload across the 800,000-hectare estate.
Weeding said the $39,000 annual average reflected a steady operational burden across Sustainable Timber Tasmania’s three-year clean-up record, with the recent oil incident in Tasmania’s north-west materially raising that figure inside a single event in a single corner of the state.
