Fly­tip­ping attracts swift pen­alty

The Oamaru Mail

11 Sep 2026

‘‘Swift justice’’ has been taken against Oamaru fly­tip­pers thanks to civic­minded loc­als, the coun­cil says.

Loc­als informed Waitaki Dis­trict Coun­cil cus­tomer liaison officers at the Oamaru Pub­lic Lib­rary on Tues­day that rub­bish had been dumped at the end of Beach Rd.

After a query from the Oamaru Mail, the fol­low­ing day the coun­cil issued a state­ment to announce the mat­ter had been invest­ig­ated and ‘‘swift justice’’ had been taken.

The coun­cil’s loc­al­ity officer for Oamaru had invest­ig­ated, and found identi­fy­ing mater­ial in the rub­bish while organ­ising its removal by con­tract­ors, it said.

Loc­al­ity officers were intro­duced by the coun­cil in July last year and focus on areas such as asset data log­ging, water meter read­ings, park­ing issues, aban­doned vehicles, illeg­ally dumped waste, and envir­on­mental and noise dis­turb­ances.

On Wed­nes­day morn­ing reg­u­lat­ory officers vis­ited an Oamaru North address and issued two $400 infringe­ments to the occu­pants for lit­ter­ing, the coun­cil said.

Waitaki Dis­trict Mayor Mel Tav­end­ale said she was pleased with the rapid response.

‘‘Fly­tip­ping spoils our beau­ti­ful dis­trict and shows a ser­i­ous lack of respons­ib­il­ity for man­aging something as simple as tak­ing your rub­bish to the tip or get­ting a weekly col­lec­tion bin.

‘‘I’d like to thank the com­munity mem­bers who repor­ted it to coun­cil, and it’s a credit to all of our team and an example of our loc­al­ity model in action — from the first report to the issu­ing of the infringe­ments and removal of the rub­bish was less than a day.’’

Mrs Tav­end­ale thanked the ‘‘over­whelm­ing major­ity’’ of people in the Waitaki who man­aged their waste and recyc­ling in a respons­ible way to pre­serve ‘‘our beau­ti­ful dis­trict’’.

‘‘No lit­ter­ing’’ sig­nage was installed at all entrances to the closed Beach Rd on Wed­nes­day.

A coun­cil spokes­man said the Antenno app was an easy way to report issues to coun­cil.

‘‘You can attach video, pho­tos and descrip­tions, and drop a pin on the map.

‘‘You can down­load it from Google Play or App Store, with no require­ment to register.

‘‘Reports in Antenno go dir­ectly to our cus­tomer liaison officers — just as if you’d vis­ited one of our ser­vice desks in per­son,’’ he said.