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Kaipara District Council is dumping the idea of a feasibility study on the establishment of a plant to incinerate rubbish and generate electricity in the district.
At council’s May 29 meeting, it was agreed that chief executive Jason Marris would provide members with a brief report confirming that council staff would not be reporting back to council on its viability.
Council said that any waste-to-energy (WtE) plant would be a private sector initiative, not a council project.
Council first called for a viability report on WtE in April last year. Since then, interactions and meetings involving Auckland and Northland elected members and chief executives were held, and on one occasion South Island Resource Recovery Ltd (SIRRL) representatives gave a presentation on the process.
But at the May 29 meeting, Marris said it had become “very clear, very quickly” that it wasn’t for council to report on WtE viability, as any such project in the future would be a private sector one.
Cr Ihapera Paniora asked whether the issue could be brought back for council to officially “close off” the April 2023 notice of motion, citing community concerns about the issue.
Marris said he was happy to provide a half-page report to explain why staff would not be reporting back to council on WtE feasibility.
Mayor Craig Jepson, a longstanding WtE advocate, had earlier called a potential plant in Kaipara “an excellent candidate” for accelerated consent, under the coalition government’s pending Fast-Track Approvals legislation (MM, April 15).
A KDC spokesperson reiterated last week that council will not be building a waste-to-energy plant, and had not received any private sector application for one.
