Alternative for landfill ‘long, complex, expensive’
The future of waste disposal in the Hauraki region promises to be “long, complex and expensive” for ratepayers, with a 5-year capacity left on the Tirohia landfill site near Paeroa.
The Tirohia landfill has been in operation since 1998, but the existing site is expected to be full in the next five years. That leaves questions about where future waste will go while ratepayers could shoulder the cost of having to divert their rubbish elsewhere.
The quarry was considered a class 1 landfill and a convenient waste disposal option for those in the east Waikato districts whilst being used for waste transferred from as far as Gisborne, Hauraki District Mayor Toby Adams said.
The transportation cost when transferring rubbish collection short distances was “a benefit when it comes to dollars,” Adams said “but if it’s having an impact on the environment, we all know that nobody really wants a landfill in their backyard.”
Waste Management New Zealand (WM New Zealand) owns the site and they have since put forward a proposal to expand it with a new landfill cell called “Phase C”.
But so far those efforts have been without success with Hauraki District Council and Waikato Regional council rejecting the proposal while an appeal through the Environment Court in recent weeks was unsuccessful.
If Waste Management couldn’t get the green light for expansion then the alternative would be to send the district’s waste elsewhere, which would come at a cost.
“There’s a couple of options one of which is going to affect our ratepayers and that is that our waste would end up being transported to a different location which would result in a high cost for landfill.”
The other option was that Waste Management alter their business model to significantly reduce the amount of waste coming into the Tirohia site from out of town and “focus on local stuff” instead, Adams said.
The proposed landfill cell is estimated to provide approximately 8 to 10 years of additional municipal waste disposal capacity at the Tirohia Landfill site.
“To dispose of waste elsewhere would rely on the resource consent process, which is “long, complex and expensive,“WM New Zealand said.
“If the additional space for waste receipt is approved, we expect we will stop accepting waste at Tirohia between 2032 and 2035, depending on the volumes of waste received.“
But expansion of the current site had long received opposition from local mana whenua due to the quarrying of their sacred ancestral mountain - Rae ō te Papa.
After 25 years of opposition, the iwi remained set on there being no new landfill on their “sacred maunga”.