Dialogue: Welcome to the garbage capital of the Far North

By TONY GEE

Lying at the southern end of Ninety Mile Beach, surely this country's most magnificently unspoiled stretch of sand and surf, is the coastal settlement of Ahipara.

Kaitaia's beach "suburb," rich in Maori and Dalmatian gum-digging history, has a Far North west coast ambience all of its own.

The awesome 84km-long beach it sits beside attracts tens of thousands of locals, visitors and tourists, each year.

So it's hard to believe that Ahipara now has a dubious distinction - one that few outside the immediate region know about. Simply, it is the undisputed garbage capital of the Far North district.

Barely a kilometre inland from the Tasman Sea's crashing surf is the Ahipara landfill, into which pours 160,000 cu m of rubbish a year from transfer stations throughout the Far North.

That's nearly 3000 cu m of loose rubbish (now known in politically correct terms as refuse) each week. Compacted by machine, this reduces to about one-quarter of the volume.

Clay liner for landfilling is being used on the large site. There are catchment drains, pipes for collecting leachate, and observation boreholes to monitor leachate discharge.

None of this allays the fears of some local residents, who are worried about the possible damaging impact of leachate on underground water tables, from which bores draw domestic water supplies.

Odour has also been a recent problem when easterly winds blew that distinctive rubbish dump smell towards housing areas.

Rubbish is trucked in from the south, east and north at a cost to the district council and its ratepayers of several hundred thousand dollars, while the seemingly endless search goes on for an alternative southern landfill.

Work began in the mid-1990s to try to find a suitable southern facility to replace the Whangae landfill, near the road between Opua and Kawakawa. Years later, and after prosecution noises from the Northland Regional Council for ongoing breaches of its Whangae consent conditions, the district council still has no up-and-running alternative to Ahipara.

Whangae is on its last legs. Its closure is now imminent. Negotiations continue with a neighbouring landowner for an agreement to greatly extend the landfill to a new area, but even if this is successful, a publicly notified application is still likely to have to be filed with the regional council before landfilling a new section can start.

Meanwhile, the pressure goes on Ahipara to continue to take the bulk of the district's garbage.

Some relief from this unsatisfactory situation may come in the medium to long term from concerted efforts by Kaitaia's Community Business and Environment Centre and its active Slash Trash campaign.

The centre, a local, regional and national leader in waste-reduction programmes and initiatives, runs Slash Trash on a $60,000 annual grant from the district council. A matching amount is raised from business and other sources.

It targets community groups such as schools (72 are now involved), businesses and iwi through an educational campaign to promote waste reduction and recycling. The overall aim, backed by a council commitment, is to cut waste volumes going to landfills by half by the end of next year.

Centre manager Cliff Colquhoun points to success so far at the local level - 67 per cent of waste volume going through its Kaitaia-run station last year was recycled. Up the road at Awanui and across at Ahipara, the recycle volumes were 53 per cent.

He estimates that about 27 to 30 per cent of the district's waste volume is being recycled, and, therefore, kept out of landfill operations.

Green waste is now a key element for further momentum, together with upgrades at some transfer stations.

District council works manager Geoff Cobb believes that if Slash Trash and Zero Waste initiatives succeed in significantly reducing waste volumes in the long term, the Ahipara landfill operation might not have to continue.

That would be a great result for environmental and cost-saving reasons, given the road distances the district's rubbish has to travel to Ahipara.

The opportunity is there for everyone to make an effort to recycle and reduce waste volumes. If the Kaitaia area can achieve a 50 per cent reduction, why not the rest of the district?