A disability pensioner and farm worker secretly dumped more than 100,000 old tyres on a woman’s rural property near Mildura, leaving her family with a clean-up bill of almost $1 million after she died and his enormous stockpile was discovered.
Maureen Engledow, the executor of the estate, said the family had sold two properties and exhausted family savings to pay the cost of removing 108,956 tyres that had been dumped on her late sister’s farm, mostly behind trees and among mallee scrub, where they had not been seen by her sister. The court heard that he claimed hardship and did not contribute financially to the clean-up cost, and even asked for fuel money to move the small proportion of the gigantic tyre pile he transported off the property, according to a report in“When I said, ‘You need to take everything with you’, he said, ‘I can’t do that, I don’t have any money’,” Engledow toldThomson initially struck an agreement with Engledow’s late sister to store some tyres on the property, a share farm, but stockpiled tens of...
The EPA’s chief investigator, Greg Elms, commended the executors for taking on the responsibility and financial liability of cleaning up.