A Hastings woman's years of talking rubbish to her district council seem to have done little to abate the miscreance of littermongers spoiling her neighbourhood on the outskirts of the city.
They're at it again, dumping what appears to be construction or home and property waste near Shirley Wilson's home in Irongate Rd West, a once-busy thoroughfare which was bisected into a dead-end street off Stock Rd by the building of the Hawke's Bay Expressway.
It was dumped outside normal business hours late on Sunday night or early Monday, sparking three calls to the council as she tried to get it moved, which she believes will need a digger and a vehicle at least as big as the one likely to have been involved in depositing the waste. There had been at least one previous occasion where a crane was needed to lift items from a ditch.
A resident of the area for 21 years, Mrs Wilson said "hardly a week goes by" without her having to call the council, and she was sometimes sick of having to clean-up the mess that included the tacky reminders of wayside romantic liaisons.
In January 2014, one holiday-season dumping included three barbecues, a table, chairs, bicycles, and hundreds of bottles. Commonly there are grass and other garden refuse, and more pungent disposals such as stock carcasses and fish heads and shells.