Tom’s Temporary Bridge

Tom arrived at Bill’s place one morning with a cement mixer, a trailer full of steel and a rolled-up set of drawings tucked under his arm.

“I’m building a trial bridge across the creek,” he said.

Bill looked at the mixer, then at the steel, then at the drawings.

“How temporary is this trial?”

“Three years,” said Tom. “Long enough to work out whether the bridge works.”

Dog had already climbed onto the trailer and was inspecting the steel for anything edible.

Tom led them down to the creek. It was the widest part of the creek on Bill’s property, with steep banks and a boggy patch on one side. Tom had marked out two large concrete abutments and cleared a track through the paddock.

Bill looked upstream. About fifty metres away, a shallow drainage channel crossed the same paddock.

“If you only want to test the bridge,” he said, “why not put a small one across that channel?”

Tom shook his head.

“That wouldn’t be a proper trial. I need to test it under real conditions.”

“What conditions?”

“We don’t know yet. That’s why it’s a trial.”

Dog found a survey peg and carried it off.

Tom explained that the bridge would initially carry only his ute. Possibly a tractor. Maybe a cattle truck if things went well.

The drawings showed a bridge wide enough for two trucks to pass.

Bill pointed at the width.

“Why are you building a two-lane bridge if the trial is only for your ute?”

“We may want a bigger bridge later,” said Tom. “It makes sense to allow for expansion now.”

“So you know what the final bridge needs to be?”

“Not exactly. That’s what the trial will tell us.”

Bill scratched his chin.

“If you don’t know what the final bridge needs to carry, how do you know these foundations are big enough?”

Tom tapped the drawings.

“We’ve allowed plenty of flexibility.”

Dog returned with the survey peg and dropped it into one of the footing holes.

Tom said the bridge would help the district. At present, anyone wanting to cross the creek had to use the old causeway several kilometres downstream.

“This will be a local bridge,” he said. “Built here, for local use.”

“Where are the people coming from?” asked Bill.

“Mostly from the other side of the range.”

“And where are they going?”

“Back toward the highway.”

Bill looked at the creek, the paddock and the track Tom had cleared.

“So the traffic comes from somewhere else, crosses here and then leaves again?”

“Yes, but the crossing happens locally.”

Dog trotted across the shallow drainage channel upstream without getting his paws wet.

Bill asked why the bridge needed to be on this particular part of the creek.

Tom said they had looked for a proper road crossing closer to where the traffic started, but there wasn’t one available.

“That must mean this is the right place,” he said.

Bill looked doubtful.

“It might mean the right place hasn’t been found.”

Tom dismissed that. The important thing was to get the bridge going. Once people saw that it worked, there would be benefits for everyone.

“What happens after the three-year trial?” Bill asked.

“We’ll know how the bridge performs.”

“And if it works?”

“We’ll keep using it.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“We’ll improve it.”

“So either way, the bridge stays?”

Tom paused.

“The concrete will already be here.”

Dog climbed into the cement mixer.

Bill pulled him out before Tom could demonstrate the circular movement of construction materials.

A week later, the abutments were poured. Two weeks after that, the steel frame was in place. Tom had not yet decided what deck material to use, because testing different deck materials was part of the trial.

He laid timber planks across half the bridge and steel mesh across the other half.

“The timber side is for ordinary traffic,” he explained. “The mesh side lets us test future options.”

Bill noticed that some of the timber had come from an old shed three towns away.

“Local materials?” he asked.

“Locally installed,” said Tom.

Tom put up a sign at the entrance:

TEMPORARY TRIAL BRIDGE
LIGHT VEHICLES ONLY

Underneath, he added:

DESIGNED FOR POSSIBLE FUTURE HEAVY VEHICLES

Bill read it twice.

“How much weight can it actually carry?”

“We won’t know until we test it.”

“What is the maximum load during the trial?”

“Whatever proves safe.”

“And how will you know what proves safe?”

“We’ll monitor the bridge.”

Dog chose that moment to walk onto it carrying the missing survey peg.

The timber planks held.

Dog came back with a fence post.

The bridge still held.

Then he returned dragging a length of chain attached to an old water tank.

“Dog!” shouted Bill.

Dog continued across. The timber bounced, the mesh sagged and one end of the bridge shifted slightly on its bearings.

Tom stared at it.

“That wasn’t part of the trial plan.”

Bill looked at the sign.

“You didn’t tell him what the limit was.”

Dog reached the other side, dropped the chain and sat beside the water tank looking pleased with himself.

Tom inspected the bridge and announced that the movement showed why the trial was necessary. He would strengthen the frame.

Bill pointed out that adding more steel would increase the weight on the foundations.

Tom said they could enlarge the foundations.

Bill reminded him that the bigger foundations would make the bridge even less temporary.

Tom said that was acceptable because the district might need a permanent bridge.

Bill asked whether a permanent bridge should have been properly designed before construction began.

Tom said that would defeat the purpose of the trial.

Dog picked up the “LIGHT VEHICLES ONLY” sign, carried it onto the bridge and dropped it over the sagging section.

It fitted perfectly.

Bill looked at Tom.

“Every time you fix one part of your story, you break another part.”

Tom looked at the permanent foundations, the experimental deck, the two-lane frame, the uncertain load limit and the road that still did not lead anywhere useful.

Dog settled down on the sign.

The bridge was temporary because it was unproven, permanent because it might succeed, oversized because it might expand, underdesigned because it was only a trial, and built in the wrong place because the better place was unavailable.

Every part had an explanation.

Together, they did not make a sensible bridge.

The Biosolids Project With a Logic Problem

Tom's bridge is fictional, the logic problem is not.

The proposed biosolids-to-fertiliser facility at Glan Devon is complicated, but the basic process is not hard to understand.

Biosolids would be trucked to the site. Non-recyclable waste would also be brought in and burned to produce heat. That heat would dry the biosolids, which would then be mixed with mineral fertiliser and sold as a new fertiliser product.

The real difficulty begins when we ask a simple question:

What kind of project is this?

At different points, it is described as a trial, a future commercial operation, a rural value-adding industry and a circular-economy project. Those descriptions are not necessarily impossible to combine, but they lead to different expectations about evidence, scale and location.

When those expectations are placed beside each other, the project begins to run in circles.

The logic loop

The central problem can be summarised like this:

A genuine trial weakens the case for permanent rural industrial rights, while a permanent commercial facility weakens the explanation for missing evidence. Externally sourced feedstocks weaken the South Burnett circular-economy justification, while the lack of local industrial land weakens rather than strengthens the assumption that the project belongs in the district.

Each part of the argument creates a problem for another part.

That does not automatically mean the project should be refused. It means the applicant needs to explain how all the pieces fit together before anyone can properly assess the whole proposal.

Is it a trial or a commercial facility?

The project has been presented as a trial because some of the operating information is not yet available.

That can be reasonable. A trial exists to answer questions, test equipment and find out how a process performs under real operating conditions.

But a genuine trial should normally be narrow and temporary. It should clearly define what is being tested, how much material can be processed, how long the trial will run and what happens if the process does not perform as expected.

The problem is that the proposed development is not being presented only as a small experiment. It is also connected to a much larger commercial operation, with permanent industrial use of the land and the possibility of future expansion.

That creates the first part of the logic loop.

If the process is still uncertain enough to justify missing performance data, the approval should be limited. If it is mature enough to justify permanent commercial rights, the applicant should be able to provide stronger evidence about how it will perform.

The proposal cannot use uncertainty to lower the evidence required while also seeking a broad approval that survives after the trial ends.

Put more simply:

Less knowledge should mean less permission.

Why does the trial need to be at Glan Devon?

The next question is about location.

The processing area would use only a small part of a much larger rural property. The rest of the land may help provide buffers, separation, stormwater controls or bushfire protection, so it would be wrong to say the unused land has no purpose.

Even so, the process itself appears to have a fairly small physical footprint.

That raises an obvious question. If this is really a temporary trial, why does it need permanent High Impact Industry rights on a large Rural-zoned property?

The technical questions being tested seem to involve the burner, the dryer, the waste fuel, the emissions controls and the final product. None of those questions has been shown to depend on the soils, farming activities or natural features of the Glan Devon property.

A trial might potentially be conducted on leased land near an existing wastewater treatment plant, industrial estate or waste-processing facility. That does not mean such a site is definitely available, but it is an obvious option that should be investigated and compared.

This is the second part of the logic loop.

The more temporary and experimental the project is, the weaker the case becomes for giving it permanent industrial rights on rural land.

Why must it be in the South Burnett?

The location argument appears to begin with the idea that the project should be in the South Burnett.

The applicant then says that suitable industrial land is difficult to find within the South Burnett, so the rural property at Glan Devon is a suitable alternative.

But that reasoning skips an important step.

Why must the project be in the South Burnett in the first place?

The biosolids are linked to an existing Unitywater contract and come from outside the region. The proposed source of the non-recyclable waste has not been clearly identified, while the mineral fertiliser ingredients are also not shown to be local.

The final fertiliser is intended to be sold locally, but the application has not clearly shown how much would actually remain in the South Burnett.

That means the real geography of the project is much larger than the council boundary.

A proper site search should follow the materials. It should look at where the biosolids come from, where the waste fuel comes from, where industrial land and services are available, where the fertiliser will be sold and where the process residues will go.

Starting with the South Burnett boundary assumes the project must be located there. That is the very thing the site-selection study should be testing.

No industrial land does not make rural land suitable

There is another problem hidden inside the industrial-land argument.

If suitable industrial land cannot be found, that does not prove that rural land is suitable. It may simply show that the region does not currently have an appropriate place for this kind of industry.

The region may need better strategic planning for waste-processing and resource-recovery industries. It may need a properly serviced precinct with suitable roads, utilities, buffers and emergency access.

Those are long-term planning questions.

Using an available rural block does not automatically solve them. It may simply move the industrial use into an area that was never planned to support it.

A large rural property can certainly provide space and separation. But that does not mean the industrial use is compatible with the purpose of the rural zone.

The absence of a preferred site is not evidence that the available site is appropriate.

Is this really a South Burnett circular economy?

The project may produce a real resource-recovery benefit.

Using waste-derived heat to dry biosolids and produce a useful agricultural product could reduce waste and keep materials in use. That is broadly consistent with circular-economy thinking.

But there is a difference between a circular-economy facility located in the South Burnett and a South Burnett circular economy.

A truly local circular economy would involve a clear local loop. Local waste would be processed locally and turned into a product that is mainly used locally.

That loop has not yet been demonstrated.

The biosolids come from outside the region. The source of the non-recyclable waste is uncertain. The mineral inputs are not identified as local, and the amount of finished product that would stay within the South Burnett has not been fixed.

The project may still provide a broader circular-economy benefit. But that does not, by itself, explain why the processing plant needs to be at Glan Devon.

This is the third part of the logic loop.

The more the project relies on outside waste streams, the weaker the claim becomes that it is solving a local South Burnett waste problem.

Local farmers do not necessarily require local processing

The applicant also says the facility would help local farmers.

That may be true. Local farmers already receive biosolids, and a dried fertiliser product could be easier to store, transport and apply when needed.

But two separate ideas are being joined together.

The first idea is that local farmers should continue to receive the agricultural benefit. The second is that the industrial processing plant must therefore be located locally.

The first idea does not prove the second.

The biosolids could potentially be processed closer to their source and the finished product then transported to South Burnett farms. That might be better or worse once costs, transport and energy use are properly compared.

The important point is that the comparison has not been shown.

The application needs to explain which local benefits depend on processing at Glan Devon, rather than simply supplying the finished product to local users.

The scale also changes depending on the argument

The project has another logic problem involving scale.

The development application reportedly allows for capacity of up to 120,000 tonnes per year. However, the project director later told Council that the current business plan was closer to 40,000 tonnes per year and that the facility might never grow beyond that size in the region.

There is nothing unusual about allowing room for future growth.

The problem arises when the smaller figure is used to make the project sound modest while the approval still allows the much larger figure.

Council is not only assessing what the applicant currently expects to do. It is assessing what the approval would legally allow.

That means the traffic, emissions, storage, water use, feedstocks and emergency planning should all be assessed for the full approved scale.

The likely operation, the assessed operation and the authorised operation need to match. Where they do not match, the differences need to be clearly explained and controlled by enforceable conditions.

The project director’s comments support the concern

The project director’s public comments to Council are not the basis of this logic problem, but they do support it.

He said that processing closer to the source would be better, but that the applicant did not currently have that option. He then said the aim was to “get the process going” at Glan Devon.

That is an important statement because it does not describe Glan Devon as the best functional location. It describes Glan Devon as the available location from which the project can begin.

There may be good reasons why closer sites are not available. But those reasons should be shown through a proper alternatives study.

Saying “we do not currently have that option” explains the applicant’s difficulty. It does not prove that the alternative site is suitable.

The real question

This is not really a debate about whether biosolids can be useful or whether circular-economy projects should be supported.

The real question is whether the application tells one clear and consistent story.

At the moment, the project appears to change shape depending on which issue is being discussed.

It is a trial when missing evidence needs to be explained. It is a commercial operation when permanent development rights are sought. It is an agricultural industry when rural zoning is discussed. It is a circular-economy project when local benefits are promoted.

Each description may contain some truth. The problem is that they have not yet been joined into one clear development proposal.

That is the logic loop at the centre of the application:

A genuine trial weakens the case for permanent rural industrial rights. A permanent commercial facility weakens the explanation for missing evidence. Outside waste streams weaken the local circular-economy argument. A lack of industrial land weakens the assumption that the project belongs in the district.

The applicant may be able to resolve those problems.

But before the project is approved, the trial, the commercial facility, the scale, the evidence and the location all need to describe the same development.

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