A company and its sole Director have been convicted and fined a combined $1.28 million over a 2017 fire that destroyed a Coolaroo recycling plant, burned for over a week and triggered the evacuation of homes in nearby streets.
The sentence follows a lengthy court case on charges laid by EPA Victoria under the Environment Protection Act 1970.
The fire began in a pile of waste at the SKM plant in Maffra St and flames spread through stockpiles of cardboard and other recyclables. The blaze ran out of control for two days, continued to burn for more than a week and triggered a state-wide emergency management response.
SKM Services Pty Ltd was found guilty by a County Court jury, of aggravated pollution by negligently causing or permitting an environmental hazard which resulted in a substantial risk of a serious threat to public health. The jury also found the company guilty of three charges of polluting the atmosphere. The company has today been convicted and fined $1.14 million.
SKM's sole director, Robert Leo Italiano, had earlier entered a plea of guilty to a charge of polluting the atmosphere as a result of the fire. He has been convicted and fined $140,000.
The County Court heard that the company was processing recycled plastic, paper, and metal, which the company was stockpiling and had spilled over to a nearby stockpile of glass. A smaller fire a few months before had reduced the facility's output and stockpiled materials had begun piling up, along with a large heap of mixed waste.
Smoke and ash from the fire affected nearby suburbs and residents of Dallas were evacuated, some of them unable to return to their homes for several days. Witnesses reported feeling unwell and described a disgusting, acrid, chemical smell.
The County Court found that the company and Italiano had contributed to the extent of the pollution by increasing volumes of recyclable materials in the lead up to the fire, despite the processing capacity of the site being diminished by an earlier fire.
EPA Victoria activated its Agency Command Team and sent frontline crews to support firefighters and provide high tech monitoring of the air quality and water quality in nearby waterways.
EPA Chief Executive Officer Lee Miezis says it was a more sophisticated response than EPA would have had during the Hazelwood Mine fire three years before.
"Conventional arrangements required us to have air quality monitoring established within 24 hours – we did it in three. We were monitoring water quality in Merlynston Creek and called in VICSES units with three more air monitoring stations, something that had not been done before," Mr Miezis said.
"Within hours, EPA's AirWatch website was showing air quality monitoring live for the emergency services and the public. EPA teams were onsite until the fire was under control and air monitoring ceased," he said.
At the height of the fire, EPA had incident air monitoring units at Sale Court, Maygar Barracks, Edmund Court, Herbert and Hampton Street, Cobden Street, Stewart Grove and Ouyen Court.
The EPA air quality stations returned 24-hour readings of "unhealthy" and "very unhealthy", and at the peak of the fire the pollution level rose to "hazardous" in Edmund Court, and at Herbert and Hampton Street.
EPA 's Deputy Chief Environmental Scientist Dr Martine Dennekamp told the court the density of the smoke was so high that "it is highly likely that the exposure to very small particles, which can enter and lodge into people's lungs and are known as PM 2.5, from the fire at SKM's recycling plant was harmful to human health".
The clean-up continued for weeks and involved the removal of 30,000 tonnes of burnt waste. To protect Merlynston Creek, 140 million litres of contaminated water had to be trapped and pumped into the sewerage system.
While the site had operated under planning permission from local government rather than an EPA licence, EPA officers immediately launched an investigation into possible breaches of the Environment Protection Act 1970, which was in effect at the time.
In the wake of the Coolaroo fire, EPA initiated a statewide Fire Prevention Program that involved nearly 1,000 proactive inspections at hundreds of industrial sites around the state, issuing more than 1,300 regulatory notices requiring fire prevention actions and more than 60 legal sanctions.
