LMCC Councillors will vote on our DA Modification request this Monday 30 June, deciding the fate of our 20-year-old business. 

A rejected DA modification would be the nail in the coffin for our business.

If you’d like to have your say as part of a story on ABC Local Radio or attend the Council vote please let us know. 

9 months ago, in September 2024, we were overwhelmed by your support of our DA modification with Lake Macquarie City Council. 

In a 24-hour period, you flooded Lake Macquarie City Council with over 250 submissions to call for fairness, common sense and urgent approval of our DA so that we could reopen and recycle your backyard green waste. 

But sadly, nothing happened. 

Lake Macquarie City Council Development Officers have sat on this request now for more than 2 years and 5 months.  Misled by the EPA, they have ignored expert reports, data and evidence.  

When we last met with Senior Leaders of the Assessment team in January 2025, they said they would not intervene and would stand by the opinion of a single assessing officer who ‘believes’ the site might do harm to the environment. 

This man is not an environmental expert. He has no environmental qualifications. For the past 2 and a half years, he has not engaged any environmental experts to provide advice to Council on the matter.  Further, he has ignored reports and data from some of Australia’s most respected environmental experts provided to him as part of the assessment process. 

We couldn’t wait any longer. So we requested the matter be voted upon by Councillors from across the Lake Macquarie region, thanks to the support of Councillor Jason Pauling.  In November 2024, 100% of councillors agreed the decision should be taken away from the assessing officer and instead go to council vote. 

The officer assessing the application has since taken a further 7-months to prepare his recommendations for the vote on Monday night. 

At the time of writing this post – we still don’t have visibility of the recommendations that will be voted upon. It’s likely the recommendation will either direct council not to approve the modification request, or worse, that it be approved with conditions that involve completely unnecessary costly works – out of line with the expert recommendations, industry standards, more than that of an operation more than 50 times the size of what we have proposed. 

WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT. MAKE SURE YOUR VOICE IS NOT IGNORED. 

If you’d like to have your voice heard as part of a story on ABC Local Radio or attend the Council vote tell us here. 

Since our closure, our usual customers continue to pay more to dispose of their green material elsewhere, like the Council Tip.

While LMCC delays our matter, and ignores community feedback and expert reports, it does nothing to address the putrid air pollution and impacts on the community from the nearby Council Tip.

Feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions, concerns or want to see the latest data and expert reports about our site via email: damien@ozmulch.com

Thank you again for your support to demand common sense and a fair go.

We hope common sense, facts and fairness will prevail, and we can get back to work, recycling organic backyard materials.