TAMALA PARK SMELLS
In fact, Tamala Park smells so much that those living near it have come to be known as the Odour Affected Community (OAC). I mean, how badly does a landfill have to be managed before that becomes a recognised stakeholder group?
Last time I posted about the need to close this landfill as soon as possible, there was some backlash. I’m paraphrasing, but it amounted to:
“Well, what do you expect? You bought next-door to a tip, dummy!”
To which I say: they, like the rest of us, have the right to the peaceful enjoyment of their homes. They have the right to expect that the landfill near them will be managed to a standard that means they do not have to wear a stench-based label.
In the same way people living near an entertainment precinct expect businesses to manage their noise, light and litter. Or you can expect a neighbour not to make your home unbearable simply because they were there first. And the Mullaloo community deserve clean water even though they live near an outfall pipe.
No one expects a landfill to smell like roses. But Western Australian landfills are licensed and regulated with the expectation that they must manage odour, leachate, landfill gas and other emissions so they do not cause unreasonable impacts beyond the site boundary.
That is the basic bargain.
So what does it look like when that bargain is broken?
It looks like Tamala Park.
In 2023, DWER received around 110–113 odour complaints about the MRC’s tip. In 2024 complaints swelled to more than 2,000. Residents told the ABC the smell entered their homes, woke them at night, clung to furniture, forced windows shut and discouraged visitors.
By mid-2024 MRC had stood up a formal Odour Management Key Stakeholder Working Group, engaged an odour consultant, maintained a complaints register with hundreds of listed complainants, logging hundreds of reports in
individual months.
When staff were asked whether the site smelled, the answer was blunt: “Yes, it does smell and sometimes really bad.”
Then in November 2024 DWER issued an Environmental Protection Notice. It had reasonable grounds to suspect emissions from Tamala Park had caused, or were likely to cause, pollution. The relevant environmental value was air quality conducive to public amenity, public health and the aesthetic enjoyment of the environment around people’s homes.
Suspected sources were listed as leachate in ponds, leachate seepage from landfill faces, and landfill gas. MRC completed the actions required under that notice, but the very same day it was revoked on 3 August 2026, DWER issued a second Environmental Protection Notice.
Again it recorded reasonable grounds to suspect emissions causing, or likely to cause, pollution. The second notice goes further. It requires MRC to remove leachate, repair and improve the landfill-gas collection system, investigate non-operational wells, enhance cover, assess the stability of the waste mass, and produce an updated capping and closure plan. It also warns that failure to comply could lead DWER to consider ordering the site to stop accepting waste.
The people living nearby are not whingers who should simply accept the consequences of buying near a tip.
For a second time and as recently as this week, the independent State regulator used its statutory powers to put the MRC on notice. That is how bad the stink has become under the current management of Tamala Park by the MRC.
It’s not that the MRC has done nothing. The problem is that, despite there efforts, the independent regulator has twice concluded it has reasonable grounds to suspect pollution affecting the surrounding community. The current set-up is clearly not meeting the standard.
And so as decisions are made about what happens next, the community deserves to understand how we arrived here and what must be done differently in future.
I will say it bluntly now and continue to make my case as this series goes on: I don’t think the regional council model is a good way to run anything. As the tip is closed and we move to new options, I think one of the first things we need is a new model of decision-making.
NEXT UP: leachate, and how an operational decision intended to address the stink appears to have helped create an even larger problem underneath it.