Banksia Landfill Gas Abatement Project

Banksia Landfill Gas Abatement Project is a landfill gas abatement project located at the Banksia Road Waste Management Facility in Crooked Brook, Western Australia. The site is situated approximately 25km southeast of the major regional city of Bunbury and 168km south of Perth in the Shire of Dardanup. The project was registered on July 16, 2015, and while the exact project area is officially unknown, it encompasses the active operational footprint of the waste facility. The surrounding Crooked Brook and Dardanup region is well known for its agricultural land use, specifically beef cattle grazing and hay production, as well as forestry, viticulture, and extractive industries.

Landfill gas projects involve the capture and destruction of methane generated by decomposing organic matter in a landfill. The standard methodology requires the installation of a gas collection system that funnels the captured methane to a flare or an internal combustion engine. By combusting the methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas, it is converted into less harmful carbon dioxide and water vapor. In this project, the gas generated from both legacy and non-legacy waste is captured and combusted, leading to the production of electricity for use at the site.

The local environment features a Mediterranean climate characterized by high, reliable winter rainfall, averaging roughly 720mm to 800mm annually. Soils in the immediate Crooked Brook area are typically sandy or lighter surface soils positioned over variable silty and sandy clays, which are susceptible to localized seasonal inundation.

As an interesting note, this project transitioned from an older, revoked Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI) method to the 2015 Landfill Gas methodology. It successfully completed a major Commonwealth delivery contract (CAC163129) in July 2022, delivering 791,855 Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) to the government. The project proponent, Cleanaway Solid Waste Pty Ltd, has faced local community opposition regarding the facility's overall expansion (dubbed "Mount Rubbishmore" by locals), groundwater protection concerns, and underground landfill fires. Additionally, in 2022, the facility was fined $18,000 by the Department of Water and Environmental Regulation for breaching a licence condition by using unauthorized shredded waste material (shredder floc) as a daily landfill cover.