Tuesday, 15 July, 2025
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Police operation sees 210 arrests
Proposed sale of historical site
Supporting multicultural women
Kiara’s strong form
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Soaring funland Fun is rising at a giant inflatable obstacle course unveilled at the South East Winter Festival these school holidays. The inaugural event combines gourmet food, rides and entertainment at Caribbean Gardens on 17-20 July. More pictures, turn to page 8 (Ljubica Vrankovic: 488275)
Wasted millions Illegal rubbish dumping is costing City of Greater Dandenong a pile of money – more than $1 million a year. Since February, the council has been getting nearly 800 reports of illegal waste a month, according to its new customer request dashboard. These numbers are where the council arranges for the dumped rubbish to be collected
and excludes incidents where there’s a chance of prosecution. Overall, council spends $1.1 million a year, picking up 1000 tonnes of dumped rubbish. The cost includes the State Government’s landfill gate fee and landfill levy of about $200,000 per year, city futures executive director Sanjay Manivasagasivam says.
“However, this doesn’t factor in the additional costs of our staff and vehicles to pick up the rubbish, and extra costs for disposing of mattresses, e-waste, tyres, asbestos, gas bottles and other dangerous materials. “The cost to our community of dumped rubbish is very high. “We could be spending this money on other
useful services, programs or amenities for our residents.” In April, Star Journal previously reported on Greater Dandenong and Victoria’s illegal dumping reports to the Environment Protection Authority. Since 2023, there had been 1,655 reports in Greater Dandenong alone. More on the story, turn to page 3
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