By CATHY ARONSON
The Waitomo District Council has been left with a mountain of rubbish and an unpaid bill after its rubbish contractor went into liquidation.
Dri All NZ Ltd went into liquidation in June when the council moved to recover a $12,000 debt. The council says the company's director, Doug Robinson, owes it $72,000 altogether.
Dri All was the council rubbish kerbside collector until late last year, when the contract was terminated.
The company disposed of the rubbish in a pit-burner incinerator on council-owned land in Te Kuiti until the lease was terminated in April.
But more than four months' accumulation of rubbish, about 600 tonnes, has been left at the pit-burner site, posing a potential health risk.
It will cost the council about $50,000 to remove it.
Waitomo chief executive Paul Davey said the council would take Mr Robinson to the Environment Court next month in an effort to recover costs for the removal of the rubbish.
Mr Davey said the rubbish would not go until the issue was resolved in court.
He said the council was also trying to recover the $72,000 debt, which includes the $12,000, through the liquidation debt recovery.
Mr Davey said the $12,000 was owed for unpaid legal fees and former deeds.
The remaining $60,000 was owed for unpaid lease rental, network charges, road maintenance and removal of a pile of rubbish last year.
He would not comment further on the details of the outstanding debt and said it was implicated in the pending court proceedings. "It is a sorry chapter of history that we would like to close the book on."
The council now disposes of its rubbish at a $3 million sanitary landfill in Te Kuiti, which opened at the beginning of the year with an estimated life of between 25 and 30 years, operated by the council's LATE Inframax Construction Ltd.
The rubbish collection is contracted to Otorohanga-based Supa Bins.
The council introduced a new waste-management strategy in July and provides free kerbside recycling and free recycling at the landfill.
It has opted for user-pays collection by making residents pay for rubbish bags, once they use the 52 rubbish bags provided free each year.
Rural residents pay to dispose of their rubbish at refuse transfer stations and trash bins, which were previously free, in an effort to promote waste reduction.
"We are now light years ahead of where we were and we have put an area of major difficulty behind us," Mr Davey said.
Mr Robinson of Dri All could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Debt dilemma leaves rubbish mountain
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