Dirty dumpers outed on Facebook
Campers seen dumping their effluent into a campground drain were outed on a new Facebook page designed to encourage responsible camping.
The Campnz Facebook page, which already has more than 10,000 followers, is targeting 18- to 35-year-olds travelling in privately owned vehicles.
It includes stick figure graphics warning campers against going to the toilet in the bush or doing their laundry in streams or rivers.
Two followers used the page to express outrage about a couple who left Napier City Council’s Kennedy Park Resort campground on Friday after dumping house-truck effluent down a stormwater drain beside taps used for hand washing.
The posts have since been removed but one of them said the couple drove off before anyone had a chance to approach them, ‘‘leaving many campers extremely unhappy’’.
Napier City Council’s manager of visitor experiences, Sally Jackson, said staff would try to track down the people concerned as the incident clearly breached council bylaws.
An email would also be sent to other campgrounds warning them to look out for the distinctive vehicle and to educate its occupants about proper disposal of their waste. ‘‘We’d like to think it was their naivety and they made a genuine mistake,’’ Jackson said.
The campground’s commercial cleaners quickly dealt with the effluent and a plumber checked the drains to make sure it had not contaminated other parts of the camp.
The Campnz page was set up by the Responsible Camping Forum, a group that includes rental companies and local authorities. The page offers information about camping rules and etiquette.
Forum spokesman Steve Hanrahan said posts about the Napier dumping were removed due to identifying details that could promote harassment.
Hanrahan said the Facebook page was hitting its target audience and on New Year’s Day it reached 86,500 people via social media.
‘‘While there are still some hotspots where more work is needed … overall we believe that freedom camping is creating fewer problems this year than in the past.’’