After years of living next to one of Melbourne’s largest landfills, Hampton Park and the surrounding locals say the headache has grown with noise and truck traffic now pouring out of the nearby ResourceCo site.
Since the middle of May this year, locals have been trying to figure out what is happening at the ResourceCo Hampton Park site, as they have been hearing noise in the middle of the night, feeling the vibration of their houses, and enduring the unusual truck traffic in their residential areas.
The site at the corner of South Gippsland Highway and Glasscocks Road is a key facility for recycling construction and demolition materials. On Google Maps, the facility starts at 7am and closes at 4pm most days.
A resident who lives about 150 metres away from the site said the operation had been there for almost 24 hours almost every day since mid-May.
He could hear the jackhammering, the drilling, and the trucks reversing the whole time.
“During the day when they were working, you could feel the shaking,” he said.
“How can this happen 24 hours a day?”
Najib, who lives close to the site, said there was too much noise at night, the whole night.
“Trucks came in to offload something. I don’t know what’s going on there. And there are big lights,” he said.
Vaga, who also lives nearby, said he also heard noise at night. He also noted dirt on his car.
A spokesperson of ResourceCo said the company is overseeing the active rehabilitation and closure phase of the quarry located within its Hampton Park site.
“The objective of this current phase is to restore the quarry in an environmentally sound manner,” they said.
“We acknowledge the need for these works to be considerate of our neighbours, particularly when they occur at night. To assist, we have implemented, continue to monitor and adapt operational measures to minimise disruptions.
“The current campaign of works is expected to be completed in the months of the spring/summer period this year.”
A spokesperson of the EPA said it received multiple community noise reports regarding the ResourceCo sites on South Gippsland Highway.
“An inspection showed that ResourceCo has a quarry site, regulated by the Earth Resources Regulator (ERR), and it appears this is the site likely to be the source of works noise at night,” they said.
“EPA is in contact with both ResourceCo and ERR on the issue.”
A spokesperson of ERR said the regulator is investigating claims that a quarry in Hampton Park is operating outside of its standard operating hours.
City of Casey Manager Planning and Building Tania Asper said the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA) was aware of the community concerns raised over alleged late-night works and the receiving of soil.
“Council understands that the site is currently being rehabilitated as required under the Work Authority, and DEECA are the relevant agency for overseeing these works,” she said.
According to Council, the site at 605 Glasscocks Road in Hampton Park was quarried between 1999 and 2009.
Quarrying commenced before this parcel of land was subdivided off with the now Hallam tip land, where the use of the broader parcel of land for quarry/mining pre-dated the need for a planning permit. Therefore, no planning permit is controlling the current activities on this land.
A ‘Work Authority’ licence was issued for the extraction of sand by the Department of Natural Resources and Environment, now known as DEECA.
A ‘Work Authority’ is a licence provided by DEECA under the Mineral Resources Act 1990. It regulates how the resource is to be extracted from the site and how the land is to be rehabilitated after the resource is extracted.
