In the wake of the 1999 announcement of the preferred site, Dump The Dump (the Selwyn group set up to fight it) settled in for the long haul. On the Sunday after the November general election they invited the public to join them at a picnic at the dumpsite, so that the urban rubbish producers could see the future destination of their weekly black plastic rubbish bags and weekend trailer loads to the various refuse treatment plants around Christchurch. Several hundred people accepted the invitation and headed for the hills (the Malvern Hills, that is). CAFCA was represented by myself and Reg Duder. Once again, we took several hundred copies of our leaflet on Waste Management, the same one that Reg and I had handed out at the 1999 midwinter Darfield public meeting to oppose the dump (over 1,000 people had attended that). It has been well circulated throughout the Selwyn district, being included in Dump The Dump’s material at the annual Canterbury Show and at the picnic itself. Driving towards Darfield, on the West Coast highway, motorists couldn’t escape the plethora of Dump The Dump signs on the roadsides, farm gates, and in farmers’ paddocks. These people were angry.

The three speakers at the picnic reflected the broad political opposition to the landfill. They were, in order: Sir Kerry Burke, former (Labour) Speaker and current Christchurch 2021 Canterbury Regional Councillor; the local National MP, Jenny Shipley, who was still Prime Minister, despite National having been defeated the previous weekend; and Rod Donald, Greens co-leader, and technically an ex-MP at that point, as the Greens had fallen short on election day (but ended up with seven MPs, once special votes were counted). Shipley said that one of the few consolations in losing the election was the time that was now available to her to fight the landfill. The organisers also singled Brian Priestley out for thanks. The former head of the University of Canterbury School of Journalism and well known media commentator had devoted several of his weekly columns in the Christchurch Star to comprehensively rubbishing the dump.

It was a very strange sensation for CAFCA people to be listening politely to Jenny Shipley from a few metres away, surrounded by her applauding constituents. Single issues definitely lead to strange bedfellows. It was all a bit much for old Reg, who had been heavily involved in the fightback against Shipley’s vicious benefit cuts and war on the poor in the early 1990s. He shouted out something and was promptly shoved by the rural Tory next to him. But the rain doth fall on Tory and CAFCA alike – the speeches were abruptly foreshortened by the opening of the heavens, everyone scattered and decided that while they were at it, they might as well go home. Our retreat was only temporarily stopped by Rod flagging us down to give us a piece of his homemade quiche (proving that he can’t be a Real Man). We were left with several hundred of our leaflets – fortunately we found a home for them in mailouts by Agenda 21 and the Aoraki (Canterbury) branch of the Greens.

So the stage was set for a ding dong battle lasting years. Waste Management NZ itself was heavily committed to a propaganda offensive. It took journalists to its Redvale landfill, north of Auckland (see, for instance, Press, 14/2/00; "Redvale – a place where landfills work", by Mike Bruce). Waste Management NZ was one of the finalists for the 1999 Roger Award for the Worst Transnational Corporation In New Zealand (see cover story. Ed.). This obviously perturbed it – CAFCA received an unprecedented approach from Jane Parlane, of the Auckland Communications Company, on behalf of their client, Waste Management. She rang me more than once, anxious to know things like who had nominated WM ("was it an individual or an organisation?"). We don’t release those sort of details. Her main aim was for us to relay PR material to the Roger Award judges, so that, presumably, they would have all the "facts". Eventually she sent an entire NZ Post Handibox full of PR bumf, with one set for each judge – annual reports, glowing environmental references and articles from the likes of Lockwood Smith and Guy Salmon (with friends like those, who needs enemies?), even a videotape singing the praises of WM’s Redvale landfill, north of Auckland (this had been made especially for use in Canterbury. If anyone wants the video, it’s yours for the asking.). She needn’t have bothered – WM didn’t win, wasn’t even in the worst three.

The issue was generating enough steam to run a decent size rubbish incinerator. And then, suddenly, it was over. Why? Because of a laughably simple reason. Geologists conducting preliminary site investigations came across a previously unknown earthquake fault line running right through it. In February 2000, it was officially announced that the Malvern Hills site had been abandoned. The dump had been dumped. Selwyn opponents were ecstatic; the joint venture spokesman, pugnacious Christchurch City Councillor, Denis O’Rourke, put a brave face on it: "We always said we would walk away if we found an environmental flaw. We are now showing we are not prepared to compromise on that "(Press, 5/2/00; "Quake fault rules out landfill site"). It was a humiliating climbdown for O’Rourke, who has staked his reputation on the landfill (see Watchdog 92. Ed.).

Brian Priestley had another perspective: "So, hurrah! – the Trig Hill fiasco is over. The big Malvern Hills dump has indeed been dumped. After all the fuss and expense, they have now discovered (would you believe it?) that there’s a small fault line running across the site. This has apparently come as a surprise to the City Council, the other local bodies concerned, and their team of officials and experts. Fault line or not, of course the area could be affected by earthquakes. Of course there was a danger of contaminating our water supplies. It was simply a bad idea. I am almost sorry the scheme collapsed because many questions remain to be answered about the Malverns episode, and a public hearing would have been the ideal place to put them. But it’s over now, and the City Council has still to find an answer to our rubbish problem" (Christchurch Star, 11/2/00; "Dump fiasco over").

Of course this doesn’t mean the end of the regional landfill saga. The joint venture intends to follow the words of the old song and pick itself up, dust itself down and start all over again. Just where the new site will be is the $64,000 question. Canterbury Waste Services general manager, Gareth James, said that it had relinquished its claim to the Cattle Peaks Station site at Omihi, North Canterbury (see Watchdog 91 for full details of the Omihi battle. Ed.), nor will it proceed with another favoured site, at Norton Downs, near Amberley, also in North Canterbury. The joint venture has also ruled out expanding the existing Burwood landfill, in Christchurch (which has a few more years to run). It has announced that it will have to look further afield, in a radius of 75-100 kilometres from Christchurch. It will take 12 months to produce a new shortlist of sites, and once one is selected, the whole exhausting process will start again. As for Waste Management, it is quietly building a bigger presence in Christchurch. In February 2000, the City Council announced that it would begin trial collections of garden waste, using WM’s wheelie bins.

Sir Kerry Burke Flays The Landfill And Waste Management

This unexpected breathing space has been seized on by the one local body politician who, equally unexpectedly, has emerged as a major thorn in the side of the project, his fellow local politicians and Waste Management itself. Namely Sir Kerry Burke, Canterbury Regional Councillor and an articulate and trenchant opponent of the whole thing. He has his own barrow to push – namely that incineration of rubbish is better than landfilling and he offers the model of Vienna, where he worked throughout most of the 1990s (the Vienna incinerator was built by the famous Austrian architect, Friedensreich Hundertwasser, who spent nearly 30 years living in Northland, and who died in February 2000, en route back to Austria for a visit). It needs to be said at this point that CAFCA has no expertise in the merits of the incineration vs landfilling argument, nor where any landfill should be sited. That is not our issue.