Clutha council confident Mt Cooee Landfill won’t run out of room

The Clutha District Council is confident a solution will be in place at a local landfill before it runs out of room.

In February, the council reported the Mt Cooee Landfill area was critically close to capacity – it could need to stop accepting waste by August – and could cost an estimated $157,000 a month to ship waste elsewhere.

Work has been underway to reduce, mitigate or eliminate that risk.

That work included a 3D survey to figure out how much capacity was left and how long it would take to fill up and plans to build a general waste transfer pad so waste could be moved out of the district to another landfill until a decision was made about building a new landfill at Mt Cooee.

The pad was expected to be finished by early September.

“At this stage, council staff are working to define the detail designs required for the transfer station and then go out to tender for this urgent work,” the council said.

The council acknowledged it had not been smooth sailing as councillors expressed serious concern at the early advice.

“Staff worked in the background on the risk and were successful in the various risk elimination measures,” the council said.

“Council is very confident that a solution will be in place before it is needed.”

The resource consent for the continued operation, expansion and progressive rehabilitation of the Mt Cooee Landfill was signed off by the Otago Regional Council in May.

Work to enable an extension of the current landfill cell was nearly done, but existing cell had about 15 months of capacity left, the council said.

The extension was expected to cost about $200,000.

The total budget available for Mt Cooee upgrades was $7.1 million, which also included the transfer station and a possible resource centre.

Building a new landfill cell was also a possible option.

“Staff are intending to bring back to council a decision over the economics of operating Mt Cooee versus operating a transfer station as the long-term solution.”

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