EPA slaps dairy farm with $396,000 tyre clean-up order

A Gippsland dairy farm is stunned by demands to remove a number of tyres being used to hold down silage stack covers or pay a huge fine.

Bad timing: Adrian Whittaker, on his dairy farm at Denison, is not sure what his family is going to do with all the tyres holding down their feed. Picture: Zoe Phillips

THE Environmental Protection Authority has ordered a Gippsland dairying family to remove every tyre used to hold down silage stack covers on their farm by the end of the month or face a $396,000 fine.

The Whittaker family from Denison has been stunned by the move, given the EPA’s own regulations state: “if you have fewer than 5000 EPUs (equivalent passenger units) of waste tyres on your property, then the EPA works approval and licensing requirements will not apply”.

Adrian Whittaker said while they had 6800 tyres on their central farm, its silage stacks served their four dairies across three properties milking 2500 cows.

What the family can’t understand is why the EPA clean-up notice demands they remove every tyre, in breach of its own policy.

The EPA clean-up notice could not have come at a worse time as the Whittakers prepare to harvest 120ha of maize, which was to be covered and weighed down with tyres stacked in four neat piles on the property.

“I have 3000 wet tonnes of grass silage, plus I’m making 8000 wet tonnes of maize silage and now won’t have the tyres to cover them,” Mr Whittaker said.

“It doesn’t make sense to us at all.”

It will cost the family $6 a tyre to dispose of them at the Wellington Shire recycling centre, plus cartage.

“Then what do you do with the silage that was under the tyres,” Mr Whittaker said. “My main concern is if we take the tyres off the stacks I’ve got, I’ll waste a huge amount of feed from air damage.”

As it stands Mr Whittaker said his only alternative was to buy sand bags at $2.20 and then fill them by hand on the property, which would cost an enormous amount of time.

Bree Whittaker, Adrian’s sister-in-law, has spent about 80 hours trying to negotiate with the EPA, enlisting the support of GippsDairy and Agriculture Victoria staff. But to date, she said, the EPA had refused to budge on its order.

“The only answer we can come up with is we think we’re a test case as part of changes they’re bringing in on July 1,” she said.

While new legislation reforms to the EPA Act come into force on July 1, EPA Gippsland region manager Jess Bandiera said the 5000-tyre limit remained unchanged.

“(But) tyres stored on farms, whether for payment or not, could be considered landfill, for which they would need to be appropriately licensed,” Ms Bandiera said.

“The source of the tyres could be important if it appears a supplier is trying to circumvent appropriate disposal regulations.”

The EPA did not explain why a farmer would be punished for any illegal actions of a tyre supplier.