|
Fees and Charges
Why is it not free?
People remember the good old days when you could take your waste to the landfill and drop it off for nothing. You felt as if it were free! However this wasn’t the case. Council purchased the land, paid someone to burry the waste, and paid for the machinery. You just paid for it in your rates. It was never free!
Council could still do this today. However it is not a very fair way of recovering costs. Those who generate lots of waste would pay the same as those who generate very little. What is more, people in neighbouring districts would start to take their waste to the Waitaki District if they still had to pay for disposal in their own districts and we accepted it at our landfill for free. We’d be paying for everyone else’s rubbish! And the landfill would fill very quickly.
Does charging for waste result in illegal dumping?
This is an incredibly complex issue. Only a very small proportion of people dump their rubbish around the district illegally. It really comes down to what each person determines is acceptable behaviour; and different people have different ideas of what is acceptable.
For example in “the good old days” when you didn’t have to pay at the landfill to dispose of your rubbish, illegal dumping was endemic in the Waitaki District. The archives are full of letters complaining to the Council of people illegally dumping waste. While it didn’t cost people to drop their waste off, some people just couldn’t be bothered driving to the landfill, and more people thought illegal dumping of waste was acceptable back then.
Even now most waste that is illegally dumped consists primarily of recyclable materials which could have been dropped off at Council’s Resource Recovery Park or transfer stations for free! Some people just don’t care.
What do the charges cover?
The charges at the landfills cover the cost of running the landfill operation, people to operate the site, the cost of machinery and fuel, the cost of collecting and treating the leachate, the costs of monitoring to ensure there are no adverse environmental effects, the costs of obtaining and adhering to Resource Consents, and the costs of capping and grassing the landfill when complete.
The charges at the Transfer Stations cover the cost of the landfill fees for the rubbish once it has been taken to the landfill. The costs of operating the transfer stations and of transporting the waste to the landfill are NOT covered by the fees and charges. These costs are recovered from Rates.
What are the charges? |
|