By BRIDGET CARTER
Rodney councillors are objecting to plans to dump Whangarei rubbish at the Redvale Landfill near Auckland.
The Whangarei District Council is in the final stages of negotiating a deal with landfill owner Waste Management to cart the city's 50,000 tonnes of rubbish each year to Dairy Flat.
It would
mean about an extra 10 truckloads on top of the 180 which already go to the landfill each day.
The Far North District Council carts 14,000 tonnes of its rubbish to Whangarei and is also looking at getting in on the deal if it proves to be successful.
But Rodney District councillor Pat Delich plans to fight the proposal.
"As far as I am concerned, these tinpot little councils up north can look after their own blasted rubbish."
Mr Delich said it was "absolute stupidity" putting so many extra trucks on the roads.
Rodney mayor John Law said he planned to talk to Whangarei council staff about the matter.
He could not understand why Northland was thinking of bringing rubbish down to Auckland - a region planning to cart its rubbish to a proposed Waikato landfill - when it had so much spare land.
Mr Law said a possible solution was to stop landfills taking waste from other regions. "They should be providing their own facility."
The row comes only weeks after the Whangarei council, which has only newspaper and cardboard kerbside recycling in the city, gained consent to build a new dump at Puwera, just south of Whangarei.
Whangarei District Council waste and drainage manager Gary Oldcorn said rubbish, which included industrial and household waste, and sewage sludge, had been increasing 9 per cent a year in Whangarei. The district's present landfill had to close in three years.
Initially, the idea was to build a new $10 million landfill on 84ha bought from Golden Bay Cement at Puwera.
But the Redvale option came at a reasonable cost and left the council without the worry of having to comply with future landfill regulations set down by the Government.
Rubbish would be collected by the company for five years. The council would then look at whether it would build a landfill.
Both parties wanted the waste agreement to happen, Mr Oldcorn said, but the deal still had to be signed off by the council in the next three months.
All that would be needed then was a rubbish transfer station in Whangarei.
