Dogs barked with anticipation as the former Bosworth Road landfill site was officially reopened as an 11-hectare recreational area on Tuesday morning following an intense four-year rehabilitation project.

The cutting edge technology used to repurpose the landfill site sees the shire boasting a facility that sets the standards for municipalities across the country, with an attractive area that includes walking tracks and an off-leash enclosure for dogs.

At the opening, East Gippsland Shire (EGS) council’s manager sustainability and waste minimisation, Kartik Venkatraman, said the team behind the project was proud of the great achievement.

In order to utilise the site beyond its landfill capabilities, Mr Venkatraman said it needed to be capped.

“We were looking at around $11 million to cap it using conventional capping methods,” he said.

Traditional landfill capping involves using membranous materials or heavy compacted clay to create a barrier between the waste and rainfall. These methods are expensive and require a lot of maintenance to remain effective.

“The waste sustainability unit looked at alternative technologies, and the one that you see here is an alternative capping system known as phytocapping,” Mr Venkatraman said.

Phytocapping performs a similar task with lower maintenance over time. Using the phytocapping technology also saved the council about $6 million.

Allan Boase, of Impact Blue, was the project’s director and was heavily involved in the design process. He saw the site in its former state, as landfill, four years ago and is pleased to see the final result.

The process depends largely on the 40,000 trees that have been planted throughout the site and are maintained by a Drought Employment Group crew.

“The trees act to pump water away to avoid it soaking into the landfill below,” Mr Boase said. “This is an outstanding example. There are only a handful of these throughout Australia.”

Mr Boase said it was a pleasure to be involved with the project.

“The council provided experts, like Kartik and Kate (Kate Allen, EGS environmental projects officer), who we integrated into our multidisciplinary team that included scientists as well as a professor from one of the universities in Nevada, America, an expert in phytocapping, who came out here a couple of times to inspect the site,” he said.

“It’s hard to convey the significant groundwork behind the project when you look around and see tree-covered land, but there was a lot of hard work that went into it, including off-site computer generated modelling and vegetation specialists.”

On officially opening the recreation area, mayor, Cr John White, said it was a wonderful achievement with groundbreaking work.

“It is a showpiece for others to come and have a look at,” he said.

“The benefits are amazing, with walking tracks promoting recreation and exercise. It is also our first dogs’ off-leash enclosure.”

PICTURED: The drought crew responsible for maintaining the 40,000 trees planted throughout the 11 hectares of recreational land – Brenton Davies, Clint Geer, East Gippsland Shire environmental projects officer and phytocapping monitoring officer, Kate Allen, James Munt, and Natural Resource Management field supervisor, Julie-Anne O’Neill.