City waste going out of town

By GEOFF CUMMING and MELISSA MOXON

Auckland's waste disposal plight will be eased by a huge hole in the ground 64 km down the road at Meremere, subject to appeals.

Envirowaste Services and Northern Disposal Systems have won approval to dump 30 million cubic metres of waste from Auckland and the Waikato at the Hampton Downs Rd site beside the Waikato River - a future Auckland water source. The approval on the 87ha site is for 25 years.

Northern Disposal Systems is owned by ratepayers through Infrastructure Auckland, while Envirowaste is a joint venture between NDS and Fulton Hogan Ltd.

Envirowaste's Auckland landfills at East Tamaki and Albany are fast nearing capacity.

While environmentalists criticise the "out of sight, out of mind" approach to Auckland's refuse, the Meremere site will head off a looming crisis in disposal options.

Aucklanders send a million tonnes of waste to landfills a year. Agencies have launched campaigns to reduce the waste mountain with recycling and reuse, but the need for more dumps is long acknowledged.

The chairwoman of the Auckland Regional Council's environmental management committee, Patricia Thorp, said last night that finding sites was a perennial problem because "nobody wants them in their backyard."

Meremere residents have vowed to fight all the way to the Privy Council and other groups are expected to appeal. The approval, by Environment Waikato and the Waikato District Council, follows a 12-day resource consent hearing in October.

During the hearing, Envirowaste countered claims that toxins could leak into the Waikato River. Engineer Peter Goldsmith said the dump would be lined with plastic and 60cm of clay.

The two councils found that any water or contaminants leaking through the liner would not enter the Waikato River.

Plans allow for leachate to be collected and taken to sewage treatment plants and for a gas collection system..

Conflicting evidence was given at the hearing that the site was tapu because people died and were buried there during the Land Wars.

Meremere resident Brenda Maxwell said the approval was no surprise and her group had planned an appeal.

"I'm going for legal aid and am prepared to take it to the Privy Council if I have to," she said.

Other groups likely to appeal include Olivine, which had proposed to burn rubbish at the old Meremere power station to make electricity but may now set up overseas after failing to get consent.

Olivine shareholder and spokesman at the hearing, Craig Jepson, said he was concerned the dump was only 550m from the river and upstream of Auckland's future water supply.