To feed it, an additional fleet of 24 B-double trucks, each 26 metres long, will cross the city, bringing garbage from transfer stations as far away as Clayton and Dandenong, and along the city’s already congested routes, such as Monash Freeway. The 130kmround trip will traverse suburbs…and run every 10 minutes between 4am and 4pm.

It’s a vision that troubles Jason Pugh, of Perth-based New Energy Group, which has just won contracts to turn garbage into electricity in WA. “Landfilling is the least desirable outcome for waste management. All they [politicians] see is garbage. What I see is energy.” If Victorian government approves 450ha (approx. 180 MCGs) Ravenhall tip expansion, it will be nearly twice the size of the world’s current biggest dumps.

Meanwhile train track to La Trobe Valley is surely high priority to be electrified, to get us out of pollution and expense habits of all that dirty diesel. Also energy to turn steel wheels is one tenth of all those rubber tyres on B-double trucks. On arrival, garbage(=biofuel) is easily blended with brown coal into power stations or landfill into gaping holes of open cut. How can our leaders even think so dumb as Ravenhall?

>more> TheAge