Macquarie's Washington dumpster fire
The smouldering landfill at the centre of a $650 million fraud claim.
The tip was on fire. Smoke boiled from cracks in the earth at the landfill, perched on a hilltop just outside the township of Yakima, in the US northwestern state of Washington. It was January 19, 2023, the middle of winter, and the mud had frozen solid overnight. Yet in places the ground was unseasonably warm.
Patches of grass poked through the melted snow. An officer from Washington's Department of Ecology walked the site, taking photos and thermal images for a report he filed the next day.
"We have previously suspected a subsurface fire in this area, but indications at the time were somewhat ambiguous," he said in his report. "Observations… collectively indicate ongoing combustion beneath the surface."
Macquarie Group's Macquarie Asset Management had proudly trumpeted its purchase of the tip and the rest of waste management empire DTG Recycle just a month earlier. Local environmentalists in the Friends of Rocky Top group say it may already have been on fire when the deal was signed.
