Rare law change waives $1.4m bill for WDC
A rare parliamentary law change has waived a potential $1.4 million bill relating to environmental cleanup work that left a 2.2km stretch of scenic coast road at Kakanui unusable for the foreseeable future.
Climate Change (Waitaki District Council) Exemption Order 2025, came into force on May 16, providing Waitaki District Council with a retrospective exemption from the Climate Change Response Act (2002), in relation to activity involving the disposal of historic waste located on Beach Rd.
That work was part of Project Reclaim, an environmental cleanup of historic dump and illegal fly-tipping sites that resulted in the discovery of 58% more old rubbish than anticipated.
The resulting holes left from digging up road to extract 19,000 tonnes of old refuse left the erosion-prone road unusable and it has been closed since November last year.
Commenting on the exemption order, a WDC spokesperson confirmed the Order In Council, signed by the Governor-General, exempts the council from the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) levy for Project Reclaim.
To gain the waiver, the Minister for Environment had to take the issue to full Cabinet and approval for an Order In Council.
The exemption brings the current cost of Project Reclaim to around $13m.
Overall, the project moved 67,465.49 tonnes of waste from seaside sites to a specially designed landfill cell near Palmerston.
"Council's position has always been that the remediation of these historic waste sites should not be subject to the Waste Levy or Emissions Trading Strategy, as they have a far larger positive environmental effect than the law allows for. We have convinced the Ministry for Environment on both counts, and as a result have saved the ratepayer a total of $5.3 million," WDC director of natural and built environment Roger Cook said.
While the money saved will reduce the costs to mitigate the road closure, the council will still be left with a multiyear, multimillion-dollar expense.
At a council workshop earlier this month, council staff were tasked by councillors to explore a "deep dive" into the future of the erosion-prone Beach Rd at Kakanui after councillors were told of multimillion-dollar future expenses, no matter what decision they made.
Initial staff assessments expected costs of realigning the road to be about $6.23m over 50 years, while closing just the southern section and maintaining the remainder would cost $7.71m, and moving to a single-lane access situation would cost $4.67m over 50 years.
Project Reclaim last week also picked up an Āpōpō Asset Management Award last week, sharing The Sustainability Award for Excellence in Collaboration with project partners the Waitaki District Council, Morrison Low, Waste Management NZ, Fulton-Hogan, Tonkin + Taylor and GHC Consulting.
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