A councillor says Ruapehu District Council should apologise for plans to dump a small town’s recycling station.
Councillor Fiona Kahukura Hadley-Chase says the council should keep Raetihi’s recycling station open and work with the community to find a sustainable solution that meets the town’s needs.
“We haven’t done enough to support them. We owe the Raetihi community an apology,” Hadley-Chase told fellow councillors at yesterday’s council meeting in Taumarunui.
Her comments followed a community consultation session in Raetihi on Tuesday night seeking residents’ views on recycling issues.
“They do so well in their waste management. They love their community,” Hadley-Chase said.
“We need to re-think, re-support them and find the money to ensure that the way they go about caring for their community is supported.”
The council should come up with an immediate plan and budget to boost support, Hadley-Chase said.
Council chief executive Clive Manley told Hadley-Chase the Waimarino-Waiouru Community Board, not the council, was responsible for the decision.
“When [the issue] was first raised, we gave it to the community board. It is a local, place-making issue.”
Manley said the decision would go back before the community board at its meeting tonight.
However, Hadley-Chase said the council needed to take responsibility.
“It’s very obvious that the Raetihi community are very unhappy. It’s not about blaming community boards, it’s about supporting them to ensure there are good outcomes that communities actually want.”
Mayor Weston Kirton said: “We need to do better.”
Plea for action
Overflowing bins, contaminated recycling and the dumping of non-recyclable rubbish at the town’s unmanned recycling station on State Highway 4 prompted a council plea a year ago for community action.
The council’s executive manager infrastructure Vini Dutra said last week the site continued to be plagued by long-term problems which were costing ratepayers more than $60,000 in unbudgeted spending each year.
In May last year, the Waimarino-Waiouru Community Board resolved to “develop a programme and timeline to make the existing Raetihi recycling site redundant”.
This would be done through education and providing more capacity for recycling at the kerbside.
The decision was made after the community board received the report Raetihi Recycling Service Options from council staff. The report’s purpose was to “enable the community board to propose a solution for the community issue”.
‘A necessity’
Resident Edna Hansen told the board in May that the recycling station was a necessity, and the problem lay not with the people but the system.
She said closing the station would increase the amount of rubbish being dumped, especially when the cost of driving to the nearest alternative recycling facility in Ohakune (11km away) was prohibitive.
The station needed to be emptied three times a day or required bigger or more bins, she said.
Hansen said under the kerbside recycling system, only one recycling bin per household was allowed and that did not provide enough capacity for some families, which could have up to 10 people in one home.
Community board member Angel Reid suggested the council provide free additional kerbside recycling bins or permit the use of a cardboard box. She also suggested a security camera and fine system, and educating children to monitor their parents’ behaviour.
In an October 2024 report to the community board on recycling options, the council’s environmental manager Anne-Marie Westcott proposed an alternative to the Raetihi recycling station “for the board’s consideration and decision”.
“The aim is to create a more sustainable and efficient recycling system that better serves the community’s needs while reducing costs and environmental impact,” the report said.
This involved a programme to phase out the centralised recycling site in favour of enhanced kerbside recycling services and community education, the report said.
The report proposed replacing the recycling station with a mobile recycling trailer and educator for up to two hours either once a month or fortnightly.
Designed for tourists
The October report said the recycling station was designed for tourist use but because it was being used by the wider community and open all hours, it was unable to cope with the volume and types of waste being left in and around the four 240-litre bins.
That required costly and frequent servicing at “an unsustainable rate”.
“The bins can be emptied and then require servicing again within an hour due to overflowing [sic],” the report said.
“The site was originally developed to handle small quantities of tourist waste, not to function as a secondary transfer station or for those opting out of kerbside collection.”
The council’s kerbside rubbish, recycling and food scrap collections are paid for via targeted rates for those who receive the service. Pink rubbish bags cost $23.50 for five 60L bags or $13.75 for five 35L bags.
Recycling at a transfer station is free.
The councillor appointed to the community board, David ‘Rabbit’ Nottage, said the board made the best decision possible with the information it had, but after Tuesday night’s community consultation, “the board knows what the people want”.
“It shouldn’t be taken away, it should be enhanced,” Nottage said.
Community board chairman John ‘Luigi’ Hotter told Local Democracy Reporting the issue would be discussed again at its meeting in Waiouru tonight. He declined to comment further.
LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air
