Council resolved at its June 2026 Ordinary Meeting to adopt a new 2026/27 fee: a Residential Asbestos Disposal Fee of $618 per tonne. Under section 610F of the Local Government Act 1993 a new fee has to be publicly exhibited for 28 days before it can be included in the Fees and Charges, which is what is happening now.
The fee is not free-standing. It funds a pilot Residential Asbestos Disposal Program at
the Ballina Resource Recovery Centre, which the council is preparing in
collaboration with Local Government NSW. In the council's own description, the trial will
provide a safe, controlled and lawful disposal option for small volumes of correctly
packaged non-friable asbestos generated within the Ballina Shire
, and the program aims to
improve access to a compliant disposal service, reduce the risk of illegal dumping and
support the safe removal of legacy asbestos from the built environment
.
The number that matters is not the one in the fee
A tonne of asbestos is not a household quantity. The service is pre-booked only and limited to quantities less than 10 square metres or 100kg per customer. At $618 per tonne, 100kg costs $61.80. That is the practical ceiling for a resident using this service as designed, and it is the figure worth carrying away from the exhibition notice.
The two caps are also roughly consistent with each other. Non-friable asbestos in a Northern Rivers house is typically cement sheeting, and ten square metres of it lands in the same order of magnitude as a hundred kilograms. The council has not published a conversion, and we are not going to invent one, but the limits are clearly meant to describe the same job: a small removal, a shed wall, an eave, a bathroom.
Why a fee can reduce dumping rather than cause it
The intuition that charging for waste disposal produces illegal dumping is a real and well-evidenced one, and it is worth stating plainly that this piece is not dismissing it. But it applies to raising the price of something people can already do. This is the other situation: the council's document describes creating a lawful option that does not currently exist locally for small volumes.
Our view, labelled as such: for a householder who has pulled down an old fibro shed, the realistic alternatives today are a licensed removalist for a job too small to be worth anyone's minimum call-out, a trip to a facility that may be a long drive away, or the thing the council is trying to prevent. A pre-booked $62 option at the local recovery centre is a different proposition to all three. Whether it works is an empirical question, and a three-month trial is the honest way to ask it.
What is actually being decided, and by when
The trial is planned to run for an initial three months commencing late 2026, and the council states it is subject to the adoption of the proposed fee. So the fee is not a charge being layered onto an existing service; on the council's own account, the service does not start unless the fee is adopted.
Update, 19 August 2026: submissions have closed. They closed on Monday 10 August 2026, and the council has not published its decision on whether the fee goes into the 2026/27 Fees and Charges. What follows is a record of what the exhibition asked for.
Submissions closed Monday 10 August 2026. The council says comments provided through its feedback form are a formal submission that will be considered when it decides whether to include the fee in the 2026/27 Fees and Charges. The listed contact is Linda Coulter, Manager Financial Services, on 1300 864 444.
How we sourced this
Everything above is from Ballina Shire Council's exhibition page for the fee, on the council's Your Say Ballina engagement platform, read on 30 July 2026: the June 2026 Ordinary Meeting resolution, the $618 per tonne figure, the collaboration with Local Government NSW, the pilot program at the Ballina Resource Recovery Centre, the description and stated aims quoted above, the pre-booking requirement and the 10 square metre / 100kg limits, the three-month trial commencing late 2026 subject to adoption, the section 610F exhibition requirement, the 10 August 2026 submission close and the listed contact.
The $61.80 figure is our arithmetic on the council's own numbers: $618 per tonne applied to the stated 100kg cap. The observation that ten square metres of cement sheeting and one hundred kilograms are the same order of magnitude is our own; the council publishes no conversion between the two limits and we have not adopted a sheet weight, because the ones in circulation vary and a fabricated precision would be worse than none.
We have not seen the June 2026 council business paper or minutes, only the exhibition page, so the resolution is as the council describes it here. The paragraph beginning "Our view" is opinion, built on the sourced facts above it. We make no claim about the conduct of any removalist, resident or business.
Sources
- Ballina Shire Council, New Fee 2026/27 - Residential Asbestos Disposal (public exhibition page, Your Say Ballina, read 30 July 2026): the June 2026 Ordinary Meeting resolution, the $618 per tonne fee, the pilot Residential Asbestos Disposal Program at the Ballina Resource Recovery Centre and the collaboration with Local Government NSW, the program's stated purpose and aims as quoted, the pre-booked basis and the 10 square metre / 100kg per customer limits, the three-month trial commencing late 2026 subject to adoption of the fee, the section 610F Local Government Act 1993 exhibition requirement, the 10 August 2026 submission deadline, and the contact details.
Spotted an error, or know what the trial has actually cost residents? Tell us and we will check it against the sources and log the outcome here.