Dumpers anger rural resident

An East Taratahi Rd woman is fuming over household rubbish, cartons, cans and bottles dumped illegally along her rural road.

Diana Reid said the litter was spread along hundreds of metres of the East Taratahi Rd verge and ranged from bags of domestic waste to cartons of empty beer bottles and discarded fast-food boxes.

"It really is looking like a rubbish tip, especially with the household rubbish that's out there. It's disgusting."

She said there had been problems in the past with her cattle chewing on rubbish blown by the wind into her property.

Mrs Reid said she and a neighbour had collected rubbish from their road as part of the now-defunct Collect Our Own Litter (Cool) campaign that ran in 2010.

Householders were asked to clean up their property frontages halfway to their neighbours' homes on either side as part of Cool.

The campaign had successfully brought together residents, councils, service clubs and sponsors and cleared a lot of rubbish from rural roads throughout the region.

Mrs Reid said she would be happy to collect the litter and clear the roadside but then would be charged to dump the waste.

Martin Sebire, Carterton District Council corporate services manager, said the council used contractors who did regular sweeps for rubbish dumped along rural roads in the district.

Council workers also would clear rubbish that had been reported, he said, and council officers would lay charges against culprits, who were sometimes identifiable from the rubbish they dumped. He said "a whole lot" of cathode ray television sets had been found dumped on a rural road in the district and he expected similar incidents to increase ahead of the digital broadcast switchover in September.

"This is probably something that will get worse and, as I understand it, those older sets have toxic elements that have to be dealt with as well."