Fly-tipping in Matich Rd, Awanui, has shocked residents in the area.
Fly-tipping in Matich Rd, Awanui, has shocked residents in the area.
Cleaning up illegal fly-tipping costs the Far North District Council about $150,000 a year — money that could instead be spent on vital community infrastructure such as footpaths.
It’s a problem the council is struggling to deal with — as it cleans up one site, another emerges elsewhere, or people go back to dump in the same spot again.
A resident of Matich Rd, Awanui, was shocked last week to find the “delightful sight” of another illegal dump there.
“This mess is easily visible on the left side of State Highway 1 at the corner of Matich Rd. I have requested a clean-up with the FNDC, but it is just ridiculous that they have to waste ratepayers’ hard-earned money on this type of behaviour of our own people in the Far North,” the resident said.
“For some unfathomable reason, it is not the first time this area has been used as the rubbish dump. If only the idiots were caught red-handed.’’
FNDC solid waste engineer Simon Millichamp said the council had two main problems with illegal dumping in the district.
Cleaning up illegal dumping in the Far North costs $150,000 a year, money the council would rather spend elsewhere.
“One frustrating aspect is that most of the illegal dumping could have been recycled for free. This includes items like whiteware, bottles, cans etc. The contents of some of the rubbish show the people doing this likely have enough disposal income to buy such things as high-end alcohol, gourmet cat food in individual cans, body-building protein mix. Another frustrating aspect is when people dump their rubbish into steep gullies — the ‘out of sight, out of mind’ mentality — but it makes the rubbish very hard and expensive to remove.”
He said the other problem is dumping of kerbside rubbish at rural collection points. Unofficial collection points develop at the end of some roads as residents drop their bags on the nearest road that does receive a kerbside service.
“People are only allowed to put pre-paid rubbish bags outside their own property or at an approved collection point between noon the day before collection and 7am on the day of collection. Unfortunately, over time some people abuse these collection points by dropping off bags at any time, resulting in a continual mess.
“The pre-paid bags also seem to attract other ‘black bags’, which need to be disposed of at the ratepayers’ expense. The constant supply of food attracts rats and other vermin to intersections which are often pick-up points for school buses.”
The Far North District Council says illegal dumping pollutes the environment.
Millichamp said the council spends around $150,000 a year cleaning up illegal dumping, money that could be spent elsewhere.
The council’s capital works programme in the long-term plan 2024-27 shows three footpath projects — in the Bay of Islands-Whangaroa; Kaikohe-Hokianga and Te Hiku — that each costs $155,250, indicating the sort of community infrastructure projects the money could be spent on if people didn’t discard their trash illegally.
“It is obvious that illegal dumping pollutes the local environment. People seem happy to pay for products, but seem reluctant to take responsibility for those products once they have finished with them. Approximately 80 per cent of household waste can be either composted at home or recycled for free at FNDC transfer stations,” Millichamp said.
