Dumping `disheartening, disrespectful'

Tiffany Holland is angered and disheartened by ongoing dumping in Waitangi Mountain Bike Park. Photo / Peter de Graaf Rubbish dumped at Mt Bledisloe lookout, Waitangi Mountain Bike Park, 8 July 2

Ongoing rubbish dumping in Waitangi Forest is disheartening and disgusting, not to mention disrespectful to the whenua, according to angry locals.

In the latest incident a truckload of trash was tipped down a bank at a scenic lookout, some of it tumbling on to a trail in the Waitangi Mountain Bike Park below.

Park project manager Tiffany Holland said dumping at the Mt Bledisloe car park happened almost weekly, but not usually on this scale. She was riding with her family on Saturday when they found trash scattered across the trail.

"Then we looked up and saw this monstrosity sitting above us, just waiting to fall down on to the track," she said.

"It's absolutely disheartening. We have a beautiful mountain bike park, this is one of the most beautiful viewpoints, but people who come here see piles of rubbish. It's so disrespectful to the whenua. This is an extremely special and significant place. The fact it's treated like this is absolutely diabolical."

The rubbish was a mix of domestic waste, rural supplies such as pig feed bags and electric fence tape, and what appeared to be the waste from a home renovation job, including roofing iron, a bathroom sink, broken power drills and power leads. Other items included an X-box, furniture, and an incinerator full of half-burnt plastic.

It is thought to have been dumped on Friday night.

Ms Holland, who "absolutely" wanted to see the latest offender fined, said an even more revolting incident occurred in March, when someone tipped a truckload of baked goods and rotten food down the bank. The bags burst as they hit the trail below, leaving a 1.5m mound of rotting, maggot-infested food.

There were similar problems on nearby Haruru Falls Rd, where at least once a week someone bought two boxes of Ice beer and threw out the empties, one every few metres.

Haruru Falls man Bruce Gordon, who helped organise a volunteer clean-up of SH11 between Paihia and Ōpua on Saturday, was outraged when he was told just hours later about the trash at Mt Bledisloe, "in a pristine bit of bush". He estimated that it would have filled a three or four-tonne truck.

He thought he had no chance of finding anything to identify the person responsible until he uncovered a bag of household waste with three separate items — an ACC letter, a building supplies docket and a roofing contract — all giving a name (which has been widely shared on social media) and address near Haruru Falls.

"They should be ordered to clean it up, and if they don't, they should be made to pay the contractor's clean-up bill. I just can't understand it. How can anyone think it's okay to do this, especially in a pristine spot like this?"

It was ironic that the dump at a tourist spot in the week Lonely Planet named the Bay of Islands as the third-best place to visit in the Asia-Pacific region.

A spokesman said Far North District Council took a zero tolerance approach to illegal dumping, and would issue an infringement notice and fine if the culprit could be identified. A contractor would pick up the rubbish and pass on evidence to the council's monitoring team.