$4.98m to clean up dump at Tokomaru

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

An old flood-prone landfill in Tokomaru Bay is set for clean up through a multi-millon-dollar project.

Gisborne District Council will receive $4.98 million to develop a remediation plan and carry out remediation works at the former Tokomaru Bay landfill, which collected municipal and light industrial waste from 1967 to the late 1980s.

The retired landfill area is susceptible to flooding from the Mangahauini River, exposing and washing out to sea waste and contaminated material.

Recent severe weather, including Cyclone Gabrielle, has shown the risk posed by heavy rainfall events and high river levels.

The Government has granted $6.6 million to clean up four historical New Zealand landfill and dump sites vulnerable to extreme weather events and coastal erosion.

Environment Minister Penny Simmonds said the grants will go towards fixing former landfills and dump sites in Tairāwhiti, Southland, Canterbury and Nelson.

“This funding will address the risk of the sites being breached by a natural event, exposing waste material and contaminating the surrounding land and waterways.

“The Government supports local government to deal with the legacy of land contaminated by past practices, directing funds each year to sites considered regional priorities.

“This funding will help restore these contaminated sites so they no longer pose a risk to communities and the environment.”

The project should put an end to repeated leaks from the dump.

A significant storm occurred in the Mangahauini catchment in June 2021 resulting in the landfill and the transfer station that sits above it being inundated.

That caused downstream environmental impacts including remobilising of landfill waste, which impacted the coast and the scour of the upper margin of the landfill despite remedial armouring undertaken over the previous two years, a 2022 Massey University study said.

On March the following year, the dump was inundated again, resulting  in waste being washed out to sea.