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A Canberra woman has turned in desperation to Go Fund Me to raise $100,000 to clear her land of glass stockpiles from Canberra's recycling bins glass dumped on her Lake George property by her father. Caitlin Miller says her father has washed his hands of the problem and moved to New Zealand and she has nowhere to turn. She doesn't have the money to clean it up, she can't sell the land which has a mortgage worth more than the property, and she can't persuade the Yass council to take action against her father. She had been betrayed by her father and had gone through five years of "an ongoing hell-loop that has severely impacted me emotionally, mentally, financially and personally", she said. The glass, which originated in Canberra's household bins, was sent to recycling by Canberra householders. Ms Miller believes that Remondis, which had the contract to run the ACT government materials recycling facility, paid Garry Miller's Group 8 $38 a tonne to take the glass in 2014. Complaints from residents soon put a stop to the material beng dumped on her Hadlow Drive property off the Federal Highway. But the Yass council could not persuade Mr Miller to clean it up and has now dropped the issue. When The Canberra Times wrote about the huge glass dumps in 2017, Mr Miller promised to clean up what he said was 2400 tonnes of glass. "It's my problem and I will get it fixed," he said. "... I take full responsibility." But Caitlin Miller said her father had done nothing. "I don't think he's ever genuinely wanted to spend a cent of his own money to clean it up," she said. Mr Miller is now listed on the webpage of a New Zealand asbestos removalist which has been clearing Wellington's Reserve Bank of asbestos. Ms Miller said she was just 19 when she bought the land in 2013, hoping it would give her the stability she never had when she was growing up in a family marred by collapses of her father's businesses. She had paid $125,000 for the 1.45 hectare property neighbouring her father's land, and still had a $100,000 mortgage. She had been told she would only get about $70,000 if she tried to sell it with the glass onsite. She had been quoted $110 a tonne (with GST) to clean it up, with her father telling her there were 900 tonnes on her land. She had looked at legal action against her father, or trying to sell the glass, trying to give the glass away, trying to generate money for a clean-up such as through an advertising billboard onsite, and trying to move the glass to her father's land, all to no avail. "I just want anyone who has ideas," she said. "Someone might know how to clean up 900 tonnes of glass. I don't have the expertise, I don't have the capital." She wanted the Yass council to take legal action to force her father to clean it up, but had been told the clean-up notice had now been put on hold and the council was taking no further action. "After five years of all the heartache with it I just want it gone," she said. I'd like to clean it all up and sell it, or sell it to someone who can clean it up." According to then ACT deputy chief minister Simon Corbell, Mr Miller planned to use the glass fines to replace sand and aggregate in buildings and roads and make pavers, a proposal Mr Corbell said in 2015 would divert the glass from landfill and save mining of sand and rock. Ms Miller, who lives in Canberra - the Lake George land is not zoned residential - discovered her father was stockpiling on her property when her brother told her in 2014. In early 2015, her father had begged her, in tears, to go to a Yass council meeting and ask for an extension to clean the site. She said she had trusted him; she was still only 20 at the time. But it was her biggest regret. "He didn't even come. I was alone. There was a room full of angry people," she said. Ms Miller said she understood why the local community was angry and she was aware that crowdfunding was an unusual step. But she had no choice but to rely now on the kindness of strangers. The Yass Council's head of planning, Chris Berry, said the council was not pursuing the dump because the cost of cleaning it far outweighed anything the council could recover. The council saw no point taking Mr Miller to court. "At the end of the day, we're taking a bankrupt to court. We can't recover our court costs because they're bankrupt. They can't afford to remove the material because they're bankrupt and they've got no money," he said. Records show Mr Miller's bankruptcy was discharged on June 20 2018. Mr Berry said the glass fines were not causing a significant risk to the environment, nor to human health, he said. "We've made an operational decision not to pursue it on the basis that we will be spending ratepayers' money cleaning up an private property that we weren't responsible for in the first place," he said. Called in New Zealand, Mr Miller refused to answer questions, other than confirming he had been made aware of his daughter's fundraising efforts. "I've got nothing to say to you," he said. "I'm not going to tell you anything. You don't deserve to know. My life is private." Local resident Roger Melton said while it sounded as though Ms Miller was "the very unfortunate victim of her father's actions", if she wanted to raise money from the public it should be managed at arm's length by an independent local group. Ms Miller said she would also like a third-party, such as the council, to manage a fundraising effort. Mr Melton accused the ACT government and the Yass council of standing by while the glass was dumped and now refusing to take responsibility. "The question of who should pay for all this really has to be answered by finding out how did it happen in the first place and who is responsible," he said. The government's contracts database shows a contract with Remondis signed in September 2014 which says the company and the government must agree on "approved recyclers" to receive material, and Remondis must also keep records of the amount sent each month. The Canberra Times has requested this information. It is not clear when Mr Miller's Group 8 began taking glass; his daughter believes it was 2014. Remondis did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Questions were put to the ACT government on Tuesday, February 19. The government said it would provide responses next week.

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