Nambucca Valley has deferred deciding whether to buy state forest inside the proposed koala park for its landfill

What was on the table

Item 11.2 of the 23 September business paper, Extension of Waste Management Facility, asked councillors to reaffirm a decision first made in 2020. Its recommendation was one line: That Council proceeds with the acquisition and rezoning process for the state forest land adjoining Council’s Waste Management Facility.

The report’s case is about space. The land, it says, is well suited to provide an additional 3,200,000m³ of landfill space, and that capacity could facilitate a regional landfill solution for the Mid North Coast (Port Macquarie to Coffs Harbour) as it would provide approximately 40 years landfill capacity for the region. It refers to the shortage of landfill capacity on the Mid North Coast.

The catch is where the land sits. In the report’s words it is mapped within the southern edge of the proposed Great Koala National Park, hemmed in by the North Coast rail line and Wirrimbi Road to the west and north, the existing landfill to the east and south, and a concrete batching plant to the south.

What councillors did

The motion put to the meeting was not the bare recommendation. Moved by Cr Angel and seconded by Cr Jenvey, it added two parts: if the acquisition succeeded, a report on purchasing some similar sized, degraded farmland to reforest, including the possibility of paying for Indigenous site management as an offset, and, where staff time permits, updated plans for a circular waste economy, particularly focusing on building and industrial waste.

An amendment moved by Cr Jones and seconded by Cr Jenvey replaced all of it: That Council defer this motion. It carried 5 to 1 and became resolution 296/26. Crs Ballangarry, Jenvey, Jones, Lee and MacSmith voted for the deferral; Cr Angel voted against. Three of the nine councillors were not there: Crs Simson and Vance had been granted leave for the meeting, and Cr McWilliam is listed under Leave Granted.

Before the vote, two speakers addressed the council on behalf of the Forest Ecology Alliance, both recorded as against the recommendation. The minutes do not record what they said, and they do not record a reason for the deferral or a date for the item to come back. They are draft minutes, subject to confirmation as to their accuracy at the next meeting to be held on Wednesday 28 OCTOBER 2026.

Six years of paperwork, and why it stopped

The report sets out the history in the council’s own resolutions:

• 16 July 2020: authority to sign a memorandum of understanding for the Waste Management Facility Compulsory Acquisition of the Nambucca State Forest from the Forestry Corporation, and to seek gateway approval to rezone the land from RU3 Forestry to SP2 (Waste Management Facility).
• 12 November 2020: the council accepted the market valuation of $126,500 exclusive of GST for the proposed compulsory acquisition of approximately 23 hectares. (A March 2021 resolution describes the same land as a 20 hectare extension; the report does not reconcile the two.)
• 11 March 2021: after native title was found not to have been extinguished, the council agreed to meet the Wanggaan (Southern) Gumbaynggirr Nation Aboriginal Corporation about the acquisition.
• 30 September 2021: a quotation accepted for an Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Assessment, which the report says was received in 2022.

That assessment is where the process halted. It found, the report says, that Nambucca State Forest is a landscape of high cultural value as a result of the extant koala population which form an important component of dreaming stories, and It is for this reason that the acquisition process has not proceeded. The report adds that stopping was not a result of a resolution by the elected Council.

What has changed since is the national park. The council asked the National Parks and Wildlife Service about the land, and the report says NPWS will recommend to the NSW Government to identify the footprint of the potential extension to the existing waste management facility as Part 11 lands under the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974, which will allow for a simpler development pathway should the landfill expansion progress in the future. If it does not progress, NPWS may seek to include the land into the proposed Great Koala National Park.

The park itself is still a proposal. The NSW Government’s own page calls it The proposed Great Koala National Park, says the government may need to make further minor refinements to the boundary before the park is finalised, and says The final creation of the park is dependent on the successful registration of a carbon project.

How urgent is the tip’s problem?

Less urgent than a 40-year figure suggests, on the same night’s papers. The quarterly waste report (item 11.3) says the active landfill cell is expected to reach capacity in mid-2030 and that the council is currently in the process of excavating a new cell, with a construction tender to be developed in the coming months. Neither report states how many years the existing site has left once that new cell is in use, so the size of the gap the forest land would fill is not in the public papers.

The same quarterly report shows what is going into the ground. We added up every stream it lists with Nambucca Landfill as its destination for April to June 2026:

Building demolition and commercial building waste together come to 2,232.38 tonnes, or 55.7% of what went into the landfill that quarter, about 1.9 times the kerbside mixed waste. That is the stream Cr Angel’s deferred motion asked staff to plan around.

Our view

The coast does need somewhere to put its rubbish, and the report makes a plausible case that a strip boxed in by a railway, a road, a tip and a concrete plant is a reasonable place to look, in a park assessment that covered 176,000 hectares of state forest. But the report asks councillors to restart a process that stopped for a stated reason, the cultural value the 2022 assessment found in the forest’s koalas, without saying what has changed about that reason. The NPWS offer changes the planning pathway; it does not answer the assessment. The report lists the preliminary assessment and the cultural heritage assessment as attachments, and as at 7 October neither was among the documents published on the council’s business-paper index for the meeting.

A deferral with no recorded reason and no return date leaves the coast from Port Macquarie to Coffs Harbour, which the report says this land could serve, knowing less than it should about where its waste goes in the long run. When the item comes back, the useful report would publish both assessments, say how long the existing site lasts with its new cell, and set the forest land against that number. We will read the October business paper for the item and report what it says.