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Contaminated Land as a Human Issue with James Maxwell
166 Plays1 year ago
For the past three years, James Maxwell has served as Environment & Compliance Manager for Moree Plains Shire Council, a rural LGA in northwest NSW.
While James still considers himself to be relatively new to local government, he brings 10 years of environmental consultancy experience into the role, with a focus on development impact assessment, contaminated land management and asbestos assessment.
Since joining Moree Council, James has spearheaded the integrated management of a large and growing number of burnt, derelict and asbestos-containing properties within the Shire, working cross agency and with the community.
James joins us in this episode to share his direct experience, and a powerful perspective shift of viewing contaminated land as an issue at the community level, and not just as a 'problem to be solved'.
You'll hear insight into the impact a lack of technical expertise can have in rural areas, what it takes to deal with asbestos issues in dilapidated properties that have been left unmanaged, and why we must consider contaminated land, especially asbestos issues, as a human and community issue.
Thanks for listening! Be sure to rate, review and subscribe to the podcast, and stay tuned for the next episode of Contamination Station: Safer Environment Together.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Contamination Station'
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to Contamination Station, safe for environment together, a New South Wales EPA funded podcast. In these episodes, you'll hear from those working to implement contaminated land policies and procedures at the local level by sharing our stories, frustrations, wins and losses. Our aim is for this podcast to become a repository of information that will support those currently working to combat contaminated land and for those yet to come.
Meet James Maxwell
00:00:30
Speaker
Hello and welcome to this episode of Contamination Station, an EPA funded podcast proudly launched as an initiative of the CRCB program. I'm your host, Chanel Gleason Willy, and our guest today is James Maxwell from Maury Plains Shire Council. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the host and the guest as individuals, and do not necessarily reflect those of the New South Wales EPA or any other organisation.
James Maxwell's Career Journey
00:01:00
Speaker
In this episode, we're talking to James Maxwell about the lessons learned throughout the early and mid stages of a career as an environmental consultant and local government officer specializing in contaminated land management with a focus on experiences and case studies of working with local government. Hi, James. Thanks so much for your time today. Hi, Chanel. Thanks for having me.
00:01:20
Speaker
Not at all. It's great to have you here. You have a wealth of knowledge and experience that I love to tap into. So you've made a career out of being an environmental consultant and environment and compliance manager with nine years in the industry with SMK before shifting to local government.
00:01:38
Speaker
Now, I know from personal experience that environmental consulting is so rewarding for the variety it brings, but it can be a tough gig at times. Can you tell me a bit about yourself, your background, and why you loved consulting? Yeah, sure. My background, I grew up in Northwest New South Wales in a fairly remote little village north of Lightning Ridge. I went away to study. I lived in Sydney for five or six years. I went to Macquarie University, learned a bit about environmental management, geomorphology.
00:02:06
Speaker
Contaminated site management there. And then sort of by the time I was wrapping up with my master's degree, I got a little bit, I guess, fed up of city life and wanted to move on. I had an opportunity to come up at Emori, which wasn't too far from where I'd grown up and I had some connections. So I thought I can go and do six or 12 months back out in the bush.
00:02:27
Speaker
So I came out and it was really my first career start, working for a small real consultancy where it was effectively thrown in the deep end to begin with. It wasn't sort of one of your formal graduate programs or cadetships. It was a case of walking into an organization and tagging along with the principal environmental consultant.
00:02:49
Speaker
And then the other more senior ones at the time and just picking things up as quickly as you could get your feet underneath you and start running. I guess the benefit of working in a small consultancy is that there was a wide scope of work and I got to pick up a lot of knowledge very quickly and start turning that into results.
00:03:07
Speaker
It wasn't just contaminated land management. There was a lot of impact assessment for developments. And you start to see how all of these pieces fit together. But over my time there, I definitely began to sort of specialise in the contaminated land management showed a bit of an aptitude towards
Challenges in Rural Environmental Management
00:03:24
Speaker
it. And so picked up more and more of that work, started to take a lead on it. But
00:03:29
Speaker
Generally speaking, it was smaller scale stuff. So we're talking about remediation of service stations, a lot of agricultural contamination events, so chemicals. But then really, I guess, being out in Moree and limited access to technical services, everything sort of gets thrown at you. And if it's the kind of thing you can feel, you put your hand up and take it on and otherwise you'll sort of bring in more technical experts to support. So from there, I guess I just loved it.
00:03:58
Speaker
the diversity of the job, the different elements that really took on my interests and really was more of a problem solving that I enjoyed about it. So each incident and contamination that you were addressing was its own little problem and you'd come up with your conceptual site model and develop your solutions and work closely with the clients and it was just a really rewarding experience.
00:04:21
Speaker
With your experience in contaminated land assessments and management that you spent a long time working towards growing, how did you feel you were doing, I guess, in the wider scheme of the industry? Did you have a lot of connection with the Sydney-based consultancies and being able to get those technical experts up? Were you able to go to conferences? Because I do know from a first-hand experience that well-trained and qualified environmental specialists have
00:04:49
Speaker
very rare in our region. And it's also very hard to sometimes bring the experts here. So what was your experience? I guess my experience was that you're very disconnected out here in rural areas. And so we didn't have those direct linkages to the metro environments, not much access to conferencing, training and development, things that if you're in Sydney are an hour away. But when you're out here in the bush, it can sometimes be a case of taking a week off or multiple days at a time.
00:05:19
Speaker
to pick up on additional skills. So it was really important to develop strong relationships with technical experts, you know, wherever they might be. And then just it's about prioritization and scheduling to bring them in when you need them. Definitely a limitation of being out here and something that I was sort of acutely aware of at the time, because you start to get a bit concerned while you're enjoying
00:05:42
Speaker
yourself, you're enjoying the work and the variety. It did sort of feel at times that you weren't able to specialize and that that might be a bit career limiting. And, you know, that plays its part into my career trajectory and becoming a bit of a generalist specializing in a few areas. But I think
00:05:59
Speaker
that general stability really translates well into a management role, particularly within a government function.
Asbestos Management Expertise
00:06:05
Speaker
So for me, the time in SMK, it began more strongly with impact assessment developed into contaminated land management. And more and more, it became obvious that the skill shortages in this region versus the issues that we were dealing with, there was one thing that really stood out and that was asbestos management.
00:06:25
Speaker
So very few licensed asbestos assessors within the region or servicing the region. And I was fortunate enough to be working for the only one out here who had the capacity to actually show me the ropes and point me in the right direction to learn what I could learn. So I was really appreciative of that. And the more work I took on in that space, the more it sort of generated for myself and for the company. These legacy asbestos issues really are rife
00:06:52
Speaker
across the country, but I guess it's felt a bit acutely out here in rural areas where there isn't that skills access and people can't just rely on affordable technical expertise. So that was something that for me, asbestos wasn't an issue that I was particularly interested in. I think I actually knocked back a job opportunity while I was living in Sydney because I didn't want to be involved with asbestos, which I look back on now and laugh at.
00:07:21
Speaker
The skill shortage really was telling out here and there was a need from the community, from our clients, from the customers. They just didn't have much education or much awareness around these issues. People generally know that there's a danger element attached to it, but don't always know how that translates. And as I said before, access to technical advice can be very expensive and not always available when you're out here.
00:07:46
Speaker
Once I started taking that on, it really did generate a lot of interest within the local region and a lot of work came from it. So you start to see the importance.
00:07:56
Speaker
And from that point on, more than happy to move forward, become a licensed asbestos assessor. And that really started to not dictate, but very much direct the work that I was taking on. It became more and more asbestos related. And so you're actually starting to pick up a lot of expertise there. But with that disconnect, we don't have a lot of the accredited assessors for contaminated land coming out. So we're managing a lot of our issues, relying on close working relationships with government authorities.
00:08:25
Speaker
for them to give us a clear position on what they needed and for us to be able to take that, communicate it to the client and then turn that into a result that everyone's happy with. That's a great segue into your current role as the Environment and Compliance Manager at Maury Shire Council. Did you want to tell us a bit about how it now has translated for this role? Yeah, absolutely.
Role at Moree Shire Council
00:08:48
Speaker
I guess what led me to join council, there was a position that was advertised and it was listed as Environment and Compliance Manager.
00:08:55
Speaker
It was sort of, it was the first environmental role I'd see pop up local government here. So I thought I'll take a look. I'll see what it involves. And I think I thought I had an understanding of the compliance within a local government.
00:09:09
Speaker
lens and boy, I did not. I was fortunate enough. I went through the interview process. I was appointed to the role, but I had a lot to learn from that point on. We had a team here that was strong on the compliance aspect, which was fantastic because I was not. I sort of spent my career negotiating with
00:09:30
Speaker
government authorities and how to get a good result for my client. But the lens, once you step into a local government or any government role, it changes drastically. And what I found that it's more, more people focused than problem focused. You know, the consulting was very much a, this is the problem. What's our solution? Whereas stepping into council, you really had to look at it through the community lens and a lot of the contamination issues that I'd previously seen as a puzzle to solve.
00:10:00
Speaker
were a human issue. There's a public risk, public safety element that you need to address. And that really has to frame how you look at the problems and how you solve them. Some of the cases that you've dealt with at a local government level are around asbestos. And are there any other areas that you've also dealt with that were a crossover from your previous role?
00:10:22
Speaker
Yes, so asbestos is absolutely what I would call the primary issue out here, just because of the legacy issues. But because of the lack of readily available technical services here in the country, what I found that as much as my role was environment compliance, and that was my lane within council, I think the council was really appreciative of my experience and expertise. And so I've also had an advisory role to the council.
00:10:48
Speaker
I guess my priorities have been a little different from that capacity, but for me, it's been about making sure that the different teams and departments within council are getting good advice or asking for advice when I think that they need it. The role within a local government perspective has an advisory capacity to internal staff. You're also the regulator.
00:11:09
Speaker
to the public and issues that are identified as public health and safety risks. And then you have management of smaller scale cleanups that are local government specific to our council. So I use the example of a diesel spill at the depot or an asphalt batching plant. So that has a breakdown and issues coming out of that. But then also some of council's properties, you know, we have an airport here and there's legacy contamination issues around that.
00:11:34
Speaker
One of the more interesting and valuable pieces that I've been exposed to in my time at Council is all of the planning and assessment work that's gone into the Special Activation Precinct that Maury's been fortunate enough to benefit from. So again, not one of the experts in this case, but the local environmental perspective. And so when we bring in all of these external consultants, they've got a central reference for the local community. Some of them understands the environmental issues, knows where to target those and
00:12:03
Speaker
can really help provide some good advice to direct their assessments. So for Maury Shire, I guess stepping back into my role with the CRCB, part of the reason for us to be in existence was to help train and educate local council officers because in a lot of councils there's a gap of knowledge there and expertise.
00:12:25
Speaker
How do you go at Maury with your team? Have you got, are you lucky enough to have a team who are trained in the area of contaminated land management or is this something that the CRCB program was able to help with?
00:12:39
Speaker
The program is important. One of the bigger limitations for working in local government is the resourcing. When I walked into council, there was a team that was established that was good at their job, but the skills areas didn't always include contamination management or the protection of the environment and space. So it was very much focused on what are more traditionally local government roles, like range of services. Illegal dumping starts to branch more towards the technical space.
00:13:14
Speaker
I'll mention the fact that I commenced the role in February, 2020, which is right ahead of our pandemic. And when I walked into the role, I was stepping into a function that was responsible for public health as well as environmental contamination and the like. So there was a lot to take on in that space. There was a significant impact to the team. I mean, to everyone in the country, but local government and those skills shortages were really exacerbated through that period because you couldn't get good advice in, you had to work
00:13:35
Speaker
and we had a team with capacity at the time. We have since struggled.
00:13:44
Speaker
with people you had and try and build up their capacity, which is why these programs are so important. But in the three and a bit years that I've been at council, we've had a high rate of turnover of staff and the training and development just, it's not there ready to go as they come through. And at the moment we have staff shortages. My team is at about half the capacity that we should be. And that's particularly limiting.
00:14:09
Speaker
To compensate for that, we bring in external contractors to deal with the more technical side of things. And I'm fortunate enough to have a couple of very experienced operators with us at the moment. But ideally, as a manager, you want to be able to build up a team with that capacity. If I move on, I'd like to think that I've grown a team here that's learned from the experience that I was able to share with them. And unfortunately, we're just dealing with a lot of resource limitations that
00:14:35
Speaker
that haven't allowed myself to really deliver the improvements here that I think I could. But that's a challenge that we're working through at the moment. We're going to have a bit of change in our executive management coming up and we're sort of hopeful for the future and start building towards better performances across the board.
00:14:52
Speaker
Well, that sounds exciting for the future. So let's jump back now and can we have a chat about the asbestos remediation works that you went through with Maury in terms of the abandoned burnt out buildings and what sort of pathway you took to remediate these sites?
Asbestos Contamination Case Study
00:15:12
Speaker
Sure. The primary drive for me joining the council role was that I had been assessing burnt out properties within Maureen and the surrounding region for about five to seven years in and out of these properties that weren't being effectively managed. So they were sort of being left there and I didn't have an understanding of the council process or limitations at the time. And so when I stepped into the role, it was something that I was going to take by the horns and really tackle.
00:15:41
Speaker
Now stepping into the role, my predecessor was actually a licensed asbestos assessor himself, which was fortunate. He'd done a little bit of legwork to get it off the ground, but there hadn't been a great deal of traction to that point. So when I stepped into the role, I took the work that he produced and I effectively overhauled it. I took it back to basics, went out.
00:16:04
Speaker
It started with a simple driving assessment. I jumped in the car, I drove around town, I started taking photos, taking notes and really looking at the scale of the problem that we were dealing with. And we're talking about legacy issues with dilapidated properties being left unmanaged for decades. What sort of scale are we talking about? Was there tens, hundreds?
00:16:24
Speaker
My initial driving inspection identified 60 dilapidated properties within Moree. And of the 60, I'd say 45, probably higher priority for demolition or significant repairs.
00:16:39
Speaker
About 80% of those properties were identified to contain asbestos. And I would say at least 65 to 70% would have been friable asbestos contaminated sites. So these are sites, residential properties that have contained asbestos and then been damaged significantly by fire. So once I completed the initial driving assessment, it was really about looking at the process that the council had established here. And there was a procedure in place
00:17:07
Speaker
that council had delivered effectively in the past. I think we had a budget before I came here to remediate about one to two properties per year. And the procedure was developed by some Sydney based lawyers, Lindsay Taylor lawyers. And it's a fantastic procedure. There are just, I guess, some human element issues in that there was a cost to council. And while there is a legal procedure to recover the costs associated with cleaning up these properties, that wasn't always being recovered. Whether the property owners didn't have the means at the time or
00:17:37
Speaker
There was a legal process to try and gain that back. But what I found was that the problem was much bigger than previously considered. The rate of incidents of further fires was increasing. And so the problem was only getting bigger. Yeah. So at this starting point, you were looking at a pipeline of sort of 30 to 40 years before the initial properties were remediated through that pathway. Correct. And the council had been cleaning up one to two per year, but unfortunately they'd been burning down faster.
00:18:08
Speaker
Once I mapped out the extent of the issue, we started throwing the ball around through to the local councillors, getting some support. I think they'd been dealing with the issue for a lot longer than I had. So they were more than happy to get behind what we needed to do. We had a mayor at the time, Katrina Humphries, who was a very strong advocate within local government, up to state and federal government. And this council basically utilized her leverage to get some attention on this issue.
00:18:36
Speaker
After council pushed for some advocacy and support because we identified that this issue was far bigger than our local government can handle by itself. So we put the call out to a lot of state agencies. We did get some support initially from the EPA, and this grew into a whole of government response that culminated in a project team to send Ian Morey to give council the support we needed.
00:19:00
Speaker
The project group was led by the EPA, but there are other representatives from public works, fire and rescue, Aboriginal affairs to help with communications and community engagement. And so the goal was to assist council in assessing the extent of the issue, but also develop a better tool, a best case tool to actually assess these properties and acknowledgement that this wasn't just a Maori problem. This is a problem that's rife, at least across New South Wales.
00:19:27
Speaker
and certainly in four or five other Shires, it's to a significant extent. So we wanted to develop the assessment tool that we could take forward and share out to the other councils. And this is how you go about cleaning up and addressing these legacy issues. And things got very interesting from then on. We had the baseline data after the team left. They provided us with a lot better statistics that were more informative, better information package for us to put out for further funding. But the limitation at the time was the support
00:19:57
Speaker
was restricted to assessment only. There was no resourcing for the actual cleanup of the properties at that point in time. So that was a massive roadblock. So it was very helpful. We appreciated the support, but it took us to a point not dissimilar than we had already achieved ourselves. And from then on, it was about determining is council going to take the lead here and actually enforce the cleanup of all these properties. And by saying that, I mean, take on the cost
00:20:26
Speaker
So just to clarify that pathway, that's issuing cleanup notices to the owners. Is that correct? Yeah. So we use development control orders under the Environmental Planning and Assessment Acts. I'll come back. We'll talk about the pathway and why we choose the procedure that we use. But yes. So another point that we identified through the in-depth assessment was the property ownership at the time.
00:20:50
Speaker
About 20% of these properties were publicly owned, which was important to note because there was a general perception amongst the community that a lot of these dilapidated dwellings were government owned and not being managed. And that led to a lot of frustration.
00:21:04
Speaker
But what we actually identified was that 80% of these properties were privately owned. And when we did take the assessment materials that we developed, we put that forward to the government agencies that owned the 20% of these properties.
Remediation Challenges
00:21:17
Speaker
And we got a very quick response. The majority of those properties were cleaned up over the following three to four months, which was, that was a great win. But the harder work started once we had to deal with the private property owners.
00:21:30
Speaker
It took an issue that we knew was going to be difficult. And the more we looked at it, the more we started peeling back layers of difficulty and that it got more and more complex. So council already had an established procedure that had been developed by councils and lawyers, which relied on issuing development control orders under the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act. So one of the benefits of having the whole of government project team was that we were able to meet and workshop these issues.
00:21:59
Speaker
So it wasn't the case that this team just came to Morey for a week, dumped a bunch of data and then took off. They did establish a working group, which was fantastic for me to really be able to deal with other specialists across the multi-layer field that this challenge really enveloped. So what the working group did is they looked at the procedure that Morey council had established and we started pulling it apart and looking at alternatives.
00:22:25
Speaker
So the first question asked was why are we using the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act? Protection of the environment is a much stronger instrument.
00:22:34
Speaker
And so we've got some legal advice around that. There was some really good workshops discussing pros and cons back and forth. And I think the whole group really felt strongly that protection in the environment would have been the stronger tool to use. But the limitation there comes back to the resource limitations at the end of the day. And we looked at the enforcement pathway for protection in the environment. And in most cases, these matters go directly to the Land and Environment Court.
00:22:59
Speaker
which is quite a costly affair. And when a small rural council is looking at 50 to 60 of these enforcement items, that's a large body of work that's expensive. It's very much time and resource intensive. It wasn't the preferred pathway. It's certainly a tool to have within the toolbox, but looking at this issue, it wasn't preferred.
00:23:21
Speaker
One of the other instruments that we've got, and we're quite comfortable working with here at Maury Council is the Local Government Act. There are provisions within that act for demolition orders and the like, but at the end of the day, the Environmental Planning Assessment Act does provide a bit more detail, a bit more guidance, and a bit more strength to enforce those orders. So as much as we were all workshopping these ideas and entertaining different avenues to take, what we settled on was the pathway that we'd already established
00:23:50
Speaker
because there were provisions under that act that allowed us to govern this process without going directly to court or relying on a court to enforce matters in the first instance. You have an opportunity that if the order isn't complied with, that a council can issue a notice of intent to enter lands and give effect to the order. So what that means in general terms is if the property wasn't cleaned up by the owner, the council can issue notice to the owner, organize their own
00:24:19
Speaker
appropriately qualified contractor and go in and do the cleanup works themselves. And once those works are completed, you can approach the courts to recover the costs from the property owner. After working with a large number of property owners around these issues, it's always my preferred option to facilitate support these property owners to do the works themselves. It's a lot less resource intensive, takes a lot less time if we can empower them to do that. But unfortunately, that's not always possible.
00:24:47
Speaker
But as far as developing a best case tool or a model tool to be shared across councils, what we identify was that when the scale of the issue is this broad, you've really got to look at keeping the costs down, particularly when they're going to land on the ratepayer at the end of the day. And as a ratepayer myself, that's not something that sits particularly comfortable with me.
00:25:07
Speaker
But the first priority has to be on public safety and these buildings, particularly where they have friable asbestos conditions that are potentially impacting on the neighbourhood and people walking past. That's got to be council's first priority, the safety of the community. How much difficulty was added to this process where property owners were not easily able to be contacted or even found? So one of the chief difficulties is that more being a rural township,
00:25:36
Speaker
A lot of these properties roamed by external investors and it's seen as cheap real estate to pick up. The rental market's quite strong here, so the returns on their investments are quite high on a weekly rate. So a lot of external investors and a lot of difficulty in engaging or contacting the property owners themselves. Now there are provisions within the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act that really support council dealing with a disengaged property owner. There are periods of time at which you can give notice
00:26:05
Speaker
If we don't receive a response, then you can follow through with the powers provided under the act that allow councils to follow through with this work. So that allows you to get to a results, but then you also have the challenge of recovering the cost at the end of the day. And unfortunately the cost does have to be a big consideration when we're looking at 50 to 60 properties that need to be managed. We work on an average figure of about.
00:26:30
Speaker
$50,000 per property for a remediation cost. And you start to get up into the millions once you're working through it. And that's a cost that really shouldn't fall on the ratepayers. We should be doing everything we can to recover that from the property owners who are responsible for the management of their own land, which really leads me into the topic of insurance. What we've seen is that there's a pattern of properties being insured. The insurer does the right thing.
00:26:55
Speaker
after the fire incident. If you're driving around town, you'll see fences pop up. The site is made safe, PVA spray to suppress any potential asbestos, and that remains the case, a secured site up until the claim is processed. Now, there can be some delays with the insurance claims. I've seen cases of it taking six to 12 months before an insurer decides to either pay out or manage the site themselves.
00:27:20
Speaker
So council's got a role there to advocate and really push the timeline and try and make that happen a bit faster. But one of the bigger frustrations being a council enforcement officer is that when the insurer chooses to pay out the client, they hand over responsibility to the property owner for the management of that property. So it's no longer the insurer's responsibility. They've covered their bases, done everything that they had to do. And unfortunately that leaves a complex site remediation in the hands of
00:27:49
Speaker
property owner who may or may not be informed of all the legislative requirements. They may not be educated enough to engage an appropriately licensed contractor. I've had some challenging scenarios where I've had to issue stop works orders on people who are doing their own home demolitions and friable asbestos properties. So you're talking about people who are completely untrained, unqualified,
00:28:14
Speaker
none of the safety provisions, PPE, air monitoring, and they're in there knocking houses down, just trying to do things in the cheapest way that they can to get to the result that they need, which is to ideally rebuild their home at the end of the day. So this is where I really come back to the human factor and there's an education piece in here and trying to make the property owners understand what they're actually working with and how they're putting not just themselves at risk, but also their community, their neighbors,
Community Safety and Regulation
00:28:42
Speaker
We have had some work done on air monitoring conditions around these properties. And what we found is that there was a bit of a perception that the asbestos fibers would just be blowing freely across the community on a regular basis. But the work that was supported by the EPA essentially identified that targeted monitoring points around town were not picking up asbestos fibers. So it was really about managing the sites appropriately and making sure that if they were to be disturbed, it was done by appropriate
00:29:10
Speaker
qualified contractors. So there have been cases where I've had difficult owners, I've had to issue stock works against other completely untrained, your mum and dad type operators or under qualified contractors. I've had accusations of bullying, corruption and the life thrown against me from
00:29:31
Speaker
property owners that just don't understand the restrictions and the safety factor that they're working within. So thankfully, we've had some good support from Safe Work New South Wales. They're able to come in because it's really not council's role to dictate what a PCBU undertakes with their property. So we can issue a stop works order against someone in the land, but it's up to Safe Work to deal with them with their business.
00:29:55
Speaker
So throughout this process, what has been the biggest learning that you've taken away or your most memorable win throughout the process? I've learned a lot through this process. And one of the main factors is that every one of these properties has been its own problem. Its own onion requires you peeling back the layers.
00:30:16
Speaker
None of them have been straightforward. They've all gone off in different tangents. It's really important to have a big toolkit, so to speak, and have the experience and knowledge to pick out what tools the right one for this job, when to use that to your advantage, when to step back.
00:30:33
Speaker
So what I spoke to earlier was that council's preference is always to educate the owner, put them in a position where they're able to manage this problem effectively themselves. And we'll support that where we can. We approved a waste fee subsidy to basically cover the cost of up to 50% of the waste fee associated with these properties. So that's saving five to 10,000 in a lot of these demolitions, which is a significant part of the overall cost.
00:30:59
Speaker
And one of the things we require in order to approve that waste fee subsidy is compliance with the order. So we have some conditions within that to ensure that works are conducted appropriately, but where people cooperate with council, we try to support them and make it as easy as possible and least impact on them as we can. Unfortunately, we do deal with some difficult property owners. There are language barriers. A lot of the investors and owners of these properties, not just external to Maury, but external to Australia.
00:31:27
Speaker
So it can make very difficult to contact people to provide the education that we need to give, particularly with that language barrier. And at the end of the day, council's got to pick a line and stick to it. We've had some success in the past while I have sort of spoken to how these issues can all break down and make each individual property its own beast to work with. We have to look at them in bulk and look at how we can pull things together and where to pull them apart.
00:31:54
Speaker
We have had some great success. You know, I mentioned earlier that we'd identified 50 to 60 properties that needed attention since late 2020. We've through council enforcement seen to the remediation of 33 residential properties across Moray, which is a fantastic result. We're really proud of it. I'm particularly proud of it. That's a huge number to get through. Yeah. Yeah. I guess the frustrating disappointment for me is that, you know, when I undertook a recent driving survey, we're back up to about 50 properties.
00:32:25
Speaker
So they continue to burn and without stronger regulation around the insurance, just to determine, not that the insurer's doing the wrong thing, but that when these properties are handed over, they're either appropriately managed already, or that the property owner is being provided with the education and support they need to manage the property effectively. So what we find is that the insurer offers the property owner
00:32:52
Speaker
to undertake the remediation works on their behalf. And that comes back at a certain cost. But the payout figure is generally a lot larger if the property owner determines to undertake it themselves. And so that kind of puts the ball in their court. And then they go out looking for their contractors, they get their quotes back and realize that the cost is actually quite high and higher than they expect, which starts to lead you down an avenue that can put you in conflict with regulatory bodies.
00:33:21
Speaker
The alternative being that the property just sits there, which is what's been the case for the past few decades. Hmm. So I'm really interested to know about the root cause behind why there is so many burnt, but also just dilapidated properties in Moray. Is there something that we haven't discussed at all as to why you have such a large problem here? Looking at a crime statistics.
00:33:46
Speaker
We do have quite a high rate of arson and property damage. And so that really speaks to a lot of the cultural and social issues here in town. And those aren't specific to Moree. A lot of the country is facing the same challenges, but certainly it's highlighted here in Moree. And I think I look at it a little bit like graffiti. When you see one or two pieces of graffiti, people are more inclined to start doing more graffiti. And what we've had
00:34:11
Speaker
With the dilapidated housing issues going unmanaged for such a long time, the community starts to accept that it's there. And so it's more and more, I guess, not permissible, but understood when these properties go unmanaged. One of the things I find particularly surprising is the limited number of community complaints we get about these properties. I know from living in the community that people are quite upset and frustrated.
00:34:35
Speaker
that these properties are here, that they're not being managed. There's a real confusion around who's responsible for that. And council does its best to provide education there, but we're ultimately limited by our own resourcing. At the end of the day, what we hope is that if we start to clean the slate, if we can remove the majority of these properties, start applying pressure to the insurance or regulatory issues and try and prevent this from reoccurring, then a bit like graffiti, once you clean it up,
00:35:02
Speaker
We're hoping that it'll be less visible, less likely to reoccur, or at least that there'll be more of a community ownership in seeing that these issues go managed.
Reflections and Future Plans
00:35:10
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. And throughout this process, I guess it's an ongoing thing for you and for Moshai Council, but is there anything in hindsight that you would have done differently? Absolutely. I took this project on when I came into Council.
00:35:28
Speaker
I wasn't aware of the environment that I was walking into. I didn't have any understanding really of how local government works. You know, I obviously thought I did as someone with no local government experience, but it's an entirely different beast once you're in here. And I think if I had my time again, I would have gone back. I would have asserted myself a little more strongly. I would have stepped away from my direct management responsibilities here, which have sort of tied up a lot of my time and I would have
00:35:54
Speaker
really asserted myself to allow me to put my technical skills and time towards this project alone. I think it really, it's deserved more attention that it's been able to receive. Not that there's been any sentiment against it. I know the council, it's been a council priority. We've wanted to get this done, but because of, I guess my position, my role within the council and the management responsibilities that come with it, my hands have been tied or at least my attentions had to be spread across other areas as well.
00:36:25
Speaker
And I think something that I'm pushing for in the future is to be able to put more of my own time into this to make sure we've got an appropriate level of resourcing targeted at dealing with this issue.
00:36:35
Speaker
That is great insight into your journey along this pathway and the project and where you've got to today. It's fantastic to see that you have so great insight into the journey. Thank you so much for being my guest today. It's been a real pleasure and it has also been a huge amount of learning that I've had from you as well as from working in the CRCB program and hearing about these issues. So really, really thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience of this issue. It's been great. Thanks Shana, any time.
Conclusion and Inspirations
00:37:05
Speaker
You've been listening to Contamination Station, Safer Environment Together, an EPA funded podcast hosted by Chanel Gleason Wiley. We hope you've enjoyed our chat and been inspired to continue working towards a safer environment together. We would love for you to stick around for the next episode. So keep those headphones on, grab another cuppa and settle in for more insightful stories.