We need your help - send a letter to the Editor of the Newcastle Herald

Our story has been told by the Newcastle Herald.

The EPA has continued to provide misleading statements to the media, saying our site has ‘elevated ammonia levels up to 10 times downstream.’

They are quoting a test result taken more than 15 years ago from a single point 300m inside our site boundary. 

The EPA continues insinuate that we have allowed the historical levels of ammonia to leave the site and pollute the surrounding environment. We have instead improved the environment.

At the time the business was shut down in 2023, the single ammonia reading on site had reduced to an almost neutral level.

The environmental experts agreed there was no harm from the ammonia, and that the ammonia was almost entirely gone. There has been no harm to any of the surrounding areas of the site - in fact water quality that passes through the site often improves.

The Herald Article touches a range of viewpoints about our site. Below is the full story: 

• The EPA granted a licence to us in 2018, following a long court battle.
• The licence gave us 18 months to commence works on the site and scale to a larger operation.
• The works could not commence, as the owner of the site would not agree to a lease.
• So we lowered operations to a scale of a standard landscape supplies yard - something the EPA would not usually have oversight of.
• The EPA agreed our business could operate at this level, and in April 2022, internal EPA documents said the site was operating below the thresholds, and there was no way the site could have undertaken the works anyway, as the EPA had not provided its approval. The EPA wrote to JET confirming that operations below the threshold were lawful.
• JET received nothing else in writing from the EPA for 7 months, when a draft suspension notice was served. The EPA ignored the usual steps in its regulatory process and took unprecedented action to close us. They ignored all correspondence from us for a further 5 months, simply stating ‘that’s not illegal.’
• The officer leading the charge had a conflict of interest - and the EPA did nothing about it, allowing him to continue working on the matter, and empowering him to ignore data, discredit expert opinion and provide misleading information to close the business. The EPA are now investigating this misconduct, and have referred the matter to ICAC and the NSW Ombudsman.
• At the time the business was shut down in 2023, the single ammonia reading on site had reduced to an almost neutral level.
• Two environmental experts agreed there was no harm from the ammonia, and that the ammonia was almost entirely gone. There’s been no harm to any of the surrounding areas of the site - in fact water quality that passes through the site often improves.
• The EPA could only find a tiny loophole in the businesses DA - three words were missing to specifically state the business can receive materials below the thresholds.
• Before the site was closed, we tried to have these three words added to the DA.   The conflicted EPA officer misled Lake Macquarie City Council (LMCC) to ‘stop the clock’ on the business, as it was the only reason they could find to keep us closed.
• The NSWLEC Senior Commissioner did not know about this intervention. When she made the ruling that we couldn’t reopen until the DA modification was complete, she did not know that the EPA was misusing its powers to block it and draw it out.  A DA modification to expressly lower the risk of the operations should be a routine matter.
• Documents obtained by court subpoena said that in early 2023, LMCC couldn’t see a reason not to approve the DA modification, but it would be guided by the EPA.
• In the article, the EPA spokeswoman is quoted in the article: "When considering a suspension, a range of factors are taken into account, including the seriousness of contraventions of a licence, previous compliance history, and the level and extent of harm or potential harm to the environment and community.”
  • The contraventions of our licence were only those the EPA constructed through influencing LMCC to evaluate the site as 20-100 times our size.
  • We have always been compliant.
  • “The level and extent of harm or potential harm to the environment, and the community”, in the words of the environmental experts was “very, very low risk.”
• Meanwhile, the EPA classified the known discharge of heightened ammonia levels from the LMCC Awaba Waste Management Facility, 1 km away, as the lowest level of risk and took no action. No shut down action or penalty has been taken against the council tip in over 3 years. Instead, the EPA publicly supported expansion of composting operations at the tip, despite multiple ongoing breaches and thousands of complaints from the public around offensive odours.
• JET has never had an issue with a suspension of the licence. The issue has been with the TERMS of the suspension. Complete closure of the business was completely unprecedented and unnecessary. Closure was by design, to inflict maximum harm on the business, and cut-off any finances to be able to fight.
• JET Group and the EPA has always known about the heightened levels of ammonia at that single point, well within the site boundary. The pollution took place on the site before JET was granted its licence, and is likely to be from landfill on the site, which is the responsibility of the landowner.
• The EPA has allowed this pollution to remain on site since August 2016. The EPA allowed the owner to ignore clean up notice deadlines by more than 628 days, and chose not to enforce potential fines in excess of $10 million.
  • The EPA gave the landowners preferential treatment, changing its order to remove the pollution, to allow for the waste to remain buried in the ground, despite not having any clue of what the waste contains, or what environmental harm is occurring. The EPA has ordered the waste simply be ‘capped’ with no deadline.  Almost 2 years later, no works have commenced, and the EPA has not taken any regulatory action against the owners.
• Instead, the EPA chose to spend millions of dollars of public money to close down the business that was improving the environmental conditions on and off the site, and providing a valuable service in the circular economy.
• Council has taken two years to evaluate our business. A business that wants to operate at the same size as any of the other 27 landscapes supplies yards in the area, with enhanced environmental controls and monitoring, endorsed by two independent environmental experts as very very low risk.
• The data from the past 15 years showed that when operations were higher, the environmental conditions on the site improved.  This is not at all complex.  An involved assessment has proven the DA modification is a no-brainer.
• The Council’s requests for information have shown it is evaluating the DA modification and environmental controls in line with a site 20-100 times the size of what we are requesting.  The Council has been intentionally misled by the EPA, to keep the red tape, to strangle us, and save face on what has been an unethical, corrupt attack on our family business, the livelihoods of 18 employees and a valued community service.
• NSW Greens MP, Sue Higginson, appeared on A Current Affair this month, in support of Oz Mulch. Ms Higginson called for an inquiry into the EPA, saying communities all over NSW are losing faith and trust in the EPA at rapid rates, and the evidence suggests there is enormous scope for reform.
• Ms Higginson wrote to the EPA CEO on 7 January 2025, to request that no further regulatory action be taken against Oz Mulch until the EPA misconduct investigation is complete, and urging review of our licence conditions to be more appropriate for a small business that recycles backyard green waste. 

Please help us by sending a letter to the editor to call for sanity to prevail.