Solutions explored for ‘past use-by-date’ recovery centre

Maddy Harker - Wānaka App

Councillors have urged Queenstown Lakes District Council (QLDC) staff to find a replacement for the district’s old Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) as quickly as possible, reports the Wānaka App.

The existing facility in Frankton is “beyond its functional life” and it is costing “a lot of money to sticky plaster the problems we are having”, QLDC strategy planning manager Sophie Mander told infrastructure committee members at a meeting on Thursday (November 28).

Sophie updated committee members on the work staff have undertaken to narrow down possible locations for a new MRF, which would process recyclable material collected in Queenstown Lakes and Central Otago.

The basic needs are a piece of land of around 11,000sqm which is zoned industrial, is relatively flat, has services in place and is able to accommodate a large building on-site, she said.

Staff have identified five potential locations, including 189 Ballantyne Road, which QLDC purchased last year for $3.32M.

Others included Central Otago District Council land in Cromwell; a second Cromwell site owned by a private waste management company; privately owned land in Gibbston; and an out-of-district site in either Timaru, Christchurch, Dunedin, or Invercargill.

No single option currently stood out as a “clear financial win”, Sophie said, but the Ballantyne Road site was the highest-scoring option on a measure of five factors, including achievability and cost comparison.

She said it was the most advanced from a development perspective, with council already owning the site, and geotechnical and planning assessments for the site already underway because of work to replace the refuse transfer station.

There were still “a lot of known challenges with this site…[and the] extent of these challenges and associated costs to remedy them can’t be estimated without further engineering, environmental or planning investigations”, she said.

In addition, a masterplan had not been completed for the site and existing site operators Wastebusters and Wānaka Greenwaste were being left in a state of uncertainty, she said.

Even in a best-case scenario, the Ballantyne Road site - or any of the others within Queenstown Lakes or Central Otago - would not be up and running before 2030, Sophie said.

The out-of-district option had been included as something which could “shoulder” things if the MRF breaks down before then.

Sophie said it was not clear how much longer the existing MRF would last: “We don’t know if there will be a failure to the point we won’t be able to process material,” she said.

If that did happen, “we would be looking at sending that material to landfill, which is obviously not a good place to be in”, she added.

Deputy mayor Quentin Smith said 2030 was too long to wait for a solution.

“We need to find a way to do something sooner than that,” he said.” [The existing MRF] is already end-of-life - it’s already past its use-by date” he said.

Quentin and other councillors on the infrastructure committee also encouraged staff to continue to explore all options and not focus too much on the Ballantyne Road site.

“We don’t want to put all our eggs in one basket,” Quentin said.

Council staff will commence engineering, environmental and planning investigations for a MRF at Ballantyne Road to enable the risks to be further understood and quantified, the infrastructure committee agreed.

They will also further explore site options for both local and out-of-district options, start to prepare procurement strategies for the options and undertake a detailed carbon assessment for the options.