Website of the YearNapier woman Tracey Tasovac says the Napier City Council should be doing more to help residents still struggling to remove household items damaged by last month's flooding.
The Barker St resident remembers riding out the first night of the flooding alone.
"It's the lowest-lying house in the street. I always get flooding," she said.
"By the end of the night it was coming in the front door, the back door, down the ceiling and up through the floor."
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Black mould started to grow on flood-damaged items which had been in the "waist deep, tepid water", but she had to wait for her insurance company before throwing anything out.
"I had to wait a couple of days for my insurance company to video call to see the damage and give permission as to what was to be thrown out."
This meant she missed the first flood-damaged goods pick-up organised by local Taiwhenua volunteers.
She says she was told there would be another one a few days later, but this didn't happen, with the flood-damaged items left on her kerb.
A photo of this was used by the Napier City Council to urge residents to stop dumping because there would be no more pick-ups - for which the council later privately apologised, acknowledging it was unfortunate her house was visible in the background.
"People were calling me lazy and said I'm disgusting," she said.
Getting rid of these items has been hard for Tasovac who is still recovering from spinal surgery and only has elderly family to rely on, with her and her father's cars both written-off in the floodwaters.
"So I couldn't take my belongings to the refuge station, I had no car."
Instead, she'd hired a skip bin to collect the rubbish for $300 while living on the benefit.
Tasovac said it wasn't just her who had been impacted and wished there had been more support from the council.
"Down our street, there's a lot of solo parents or older people with health issues.
"Some of us couldn't action straight away and were held back. You think it's over but it's not."
She felt forgotten by the council and was shocked when they sent out pamphlets advising residents they could be fined up to $7500 if found with household rubbish, not inside a wheelie bin, outside their home.
"I thought thanks very much - you've put all this money into pamphlets, why didn't you help us," she said.
"They've just sat back and growled at us."
A council spokesperson said the flyers were distributed after a final sweep of the affected streets on Wednesday, informing residents there would be no more pick-ups and asking for help to keep the streets clean.
The 1500 pamphlets were printed internally, at a cost of $12.50 in total.
"From the feedback we have received from the community [...] continued dumping, whether of flood-damaged waste or other household items, has become a problem.
They said it would not have been right to do a final clean-up without informing residents, by way of the flyer, of the council's stance.
"We feel we have provided a ratepayer funded collection service as long as possible.
"We acknowledge that stopping the collection at this time may not have suited everyone, but it had to stop some time."
The spokesperson said they were aware many people might struggle to dispose of flood-damaged items for different reasons including waiting for insurance assessments, lack of transport or being unable to physically remove the waste.
That is why the Redclyffe Transfer Station and privately run Black Bridge transfer station were made freely available to people with flood waste up until November 22, they said.
"We encouraged people with flood-affected waste who had issues removing it themselves to ask friends, whanau and the wider community for help, and many did ring our Customer Service team for advice."
The spokesperson also expressed the council's thanks to Te Taiwhenua o Te Whanganui a Orotu and other community groups, Salvation Army, and Rotary, who helped with the clean-up.
They suggested people who had run out of options for flood-affected waste disposal and had not received any assistance could apply to the Mayoral Relief Flood Response Fund.