Bunbury MLA Don Punch has expressed his disappointment over the South West local governments not reaching a decision over a future waste site.
This comes after the state government took back $4.15 million in funding after community backlash from a potential waste site in the Shire of Capel.
Royalties for Regions funding was announced for the project by the Coalition Government in March 2014.
The money was granted after a decade of work between seven shires when they decided on a piece of land within the Shire of Dardanup.
However only months after the funding announcement the Shire of Dardanup sold the land to a private company.
Mr Punch said the decision by the Shire of Dardanup undermined the waste strategy and breached the funding agreement.
“The previous government and this government let councils explore alternative options to a framework which included all 12 local governments in the South West but couldn’t reach an agreement,” he said.
Mr Punch said there was now a problem on what to do with future waste.
The City of Bunbury and Shire of Harvey have a tip site on Stanley Road which Mr Punch said would meet their needs in the short to medium term.
Mr Punch said the local governments should be looking at the state government’s draft waste strategy carefully to see what they could to work within that.
“We have to ask those more fundamental questions of, well if councils can’t determine a site for future waste management what can we do to minimise the amount waste going to landfill and extend lives of existing options,” he said.
“Ultimately, local government have a responsibility for dealing with waste and should be working in a collaborative manner with the community to come up with an appropriate solution and if they are not doing that then they are not doing their job.”
City of Bunbury Mayor Gary Brennan said they needed to be more clever and use technology that is available to help.
“The long-term solution that is very popular is ‘Waste to Energy’, so diverting waste from landfill - which the traditional way of dealing with waste - is no longer acceptable because there are inherent risks with contaminating the water table,” he said.
“We need to determine how best we can turn our waste into energy and we need to be practical about it.”
The City of Bunbury also use a three bin system which has diverted 63 per cent of waste from landfill.
Have your say, how do you think local governments should deal with waste and and reduce landfill? Email jemillah.dawson@fairfaxmedia.com.au