DCC seeks extension of landfill consent

THE Dunedin City Council has applied to extend the consents for its Green Island landfill for up to seven years.

A council spokesman said the council had applied for new consents to continue operating the municipal landfill until 2029 or 2030.

Earlier this year, the spokesman said the potential remaining life of the landfill depended on the amount of waste received each year.

At the time, based on the average annual volumes received, the landfill was believed to be able to remain in operation for an additional five or six years.

Now though, the estimate was that the landfill could remain in operation for an additional six to seven years.

In May, last year, council chief executive Sandy Graham told commissioners at the hearing for Green Island’s presumed successor, the proposed Smooth Hill landfill, the council was actively progressing consents to extend the life of the Green Island landfill on its existing footprint.

Council submissions at that time revealed that in 2019 Stantec investigated expanding the footprint of Green Island, but found it would require infilling waste over the main sewer pipework into the Green Island wastewater treatment plant to a depth of about 25m.

A landfill footprint expansion would make future maintenance of the main sewer pipe extremely difficult and could even result in pipe collapse.

For that and several other reasons it was concluded an expansion of Green Island was not a suitable mediumterm landfill option.

Conditions imposed on the council when consent for Smooth Hill was granted included the need to prepare a southern blackbacked gull management plan and to reduce the existing level of bird strike risk to aviation before the closure of the Green Island landfill where the native birds flocked in large numbers.

The council spokesman said this week an initial survey had been completed that gave the council an average number of southern blackbacked gulls by site.

It did not include a definitive count of the total population.

‘‘A more detailed survey will follow.’’

Further, a draft southern blackbacked gull management plan had been developed, but further monitoring of the birds was required before the management plan could be completed. No work had been undertaken to clear the area of blackbacked gulls either on site or nearby.