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Northland Waste is planning to develop a $3 million indoor waste sorting and recycling station on land off Sandspit Road, near Warkworth.
The company has made a publicly notified application for resource consent for a 3.6ha site that is currently occupied by Wyatt Haulage and Landscaping Supplies, next to the Rodney Co-operative Lime quarry, which is zoned as future urban land.
The application coincides with Auckland Council launching a tender process for interim waste and resource recovery services at the transfer stations at Lawrie Road, Warkworth, and Rustybrook Road, Wellsford. Two years of remediation work is due to start at the former landfills in July, which have been leased and operated by Northland Waste for 20 years.
There was a public outcry when Council proposed closing the transfer stations for the work when Northland’s lease expired last September, potentially leaving residents with nowhere local to take their household, garden and other waste for the two-year period.
Following the uproar, Council offered Northland a lease extension to the end of June while it carried out community consultation and developed an alternative solution. Now, it is calling for tenders to run a scaled-down interim waste and resource recovery service for residents and small businesses at the two sites, with commercial waste activities such as taking skip bins, cleanfill or hazardous waste being discontinued.
Northland Waste chief executive Ray Lambert says that means commercial waste will need to be carted to Silverdale, hence the decision to build a new facility.
“They won’t be accepting commercial rubbish in there, which is a little bit idealistic,” he says.
“Warkworth needs a substantial facility. Small scale is not going to service one of the biggest growing areas in Auckland.
“If approved, we will convert the existing landscape supplies depot into a modern, indoor, purpose-built recovery facility. It will deal with recycling of commercial waste, which is 80 per cent of the waste stream.”
Mr Lambert says Northland Waste will still put in a bid to run the interim community service at the two transfer stations, and he would also like to work with Council and community resource recovery groups in the longer term. This would potentially allow the old Lawrie Road transfer station site to be closed.
“If Council is interested, we would be happy to collaborate with them on the new Sandspit Road facility.
It will be a much better facility than the Lawrie Road site, and Council could avoid spending millions of ratepayer dollars on capital expenditure,” he says.
“Warkworth’s commercial sector needs the sort of certainty this facility will provide. This could be a win-win for the community and ratepayers, with a new efficient and environmentally improved transfer station, and at zero cost to Auckland ratepayers.”
If approved, the facility could accept up to 15,000 tonnes of refuse a year, which would be sorted into waste, green waste and recyclables, potentially increasing to 30,000 tonnes as the local population expands. It would be a two-stage development, initially with commercial business only, then expanded to allow public usage.
The application document states that truck and traffic movements would be less than the daily current average of 65 for the first stage, though this could rise to 150 in the longer term.
“We realise some neighbours would prefer us not to be there, and we are happy to talk with them,” Mr Lambert says. “At Lawrie Road, the nearest houses are 50 metres away, but at Sandspit Road they are 150 metres away, and half the land is in the 150-metre buffer zone for the quarry.”
The Council tender process for interim waste services at Lawrie Road and Rustybrook Road closes on Thursday, February 21, and a decision is expected by the end of April.
