City council faces $152k clean-up bill

They don’t know who did it, but the Invercargill City Council is out of pocket by $152,000 plus GST to clean up a mystery material dumped on its property.

In March 2017, 44 truckloads of the substance was illegally dumped on a Colyer Rd property owned by the council.

A report received by the regulatory services committee of the council on Tuesday afternoon revealed the removal costs for the material.

Environment Southland told the council at the time of dumping that the substance might contain hazardous substances, the report says.

Subsequent testing of the matter showed it contained some elements of aluminium by-products.

The material has since been removed to landfill at a cost of $152,000 to the council.

The nature of the substance meant that the landfill site required a variation to their resource consent, which was granted by Environment Southland in January.

Environment Southland has indicated they will be undertaking prosecution and the council will support the prosecution in an effort to recover their costs, the report says.

The regulatory services committee endorsed the decision to have contractors clear the site, and to undertake further testing of the soil to measure residual contamination.

The report was received by the committee without further discussion of its contents. A further report will be prepared once soil testing results were available.