Bluff tip closure considered
The Invercargill City Council is considering closing the Bluff tip, but any decision to do so may backfire, a resident warns.
The Bluff man said the townsfolk would not take the news well if the tip closed.
He believed some residents would ‘‘dump’’ their rubbish rather than take it to Invercargill’s refuse station nearly 30km up the road.
Invercargill City Council’s infrastructure and services committee will consider the proposal to close the Bluff tip on Monday.
However, the discussions will be in committee, with the public excluded from the room due to ‘‘commercial sensitivity’’, a council spokeswoman said.
If the proposal to close the tip is approved, it will save the city council about $100,000 per year.
The council’s drainage and waste manager Malcolm Loan raised the proposal following continued low usage of the Bluff tip, and need for significant capital expenditure to upgrade equipment at the plant.
At present, the Bluff tip is open for 11.5 hours per week, and the contractor provides a staff member who is on site for those 11.5 hours.
It is open about 254 days a year and is closed on public holidays.
There have been about 70 customers at the Bluff tip per month during the past three years – about 840 transactions per year.
This means that user charges only cover about 12 per cent of the operating costs, the council spokeswoman said.
This is before any further expenditure on upgrading equipment.
‘‘Users of the Invercargill Transfer Station therefore cover the remaining 88 per cent of the cost of running the Bluff Transfer Station.’’
If the council committee agrees on the closure proposal at Monday’s meeting, it will then go out for public consultation early next year as part of the council’s annual plan 2019/20.