Community groups are calling for local action to support their campaign to close the notorious leaching Levin Landfill at Hōkio Beach this year.
Peter Thompson, Spokesperson for Over It – the Horowhenua/Kāpiti campaign to close the Landfill - says it’s time for Levin to get off the list of ‘New Zealand Shit Towns’. “With the current focus on COP26 and climate change, we want to be in the news for closing the landfill – not spending millions of dollars to keep a non-complaint landfill open. All over Aotearoa, communities are cleaning up rivers, lakes, waterways and toxic sites - that’s what we need to do in Hōkio, he says.
The group is inviting people to support the campaign by: signing their petition http://www.overitll.org writing to the Horowhenua District Council; attending a public meeting at 2pm on Sunday November 7 at the Freemasons Centre in Levin, and joining a community protest outside the Levin District Council at 4pm on Wednesday November 10. The land fill is now full and HDC councilors will vote on its future - that day.
Peter Thompson says while the Council recently closed the landfill for six months to enable community consultation and deal with long-standing compliance issues, the campaign is ‘far from over’. Council has already called for tenders to install a $1.3million new cell on the site and while it has publicly agreed to a 2025 closure date, it still has resource consent to operate landfill till 2037.
While the landfill is temporarily closed Kāpiti and Horowhenua waste is being sent to Bonny Glen – a compliant landfill near Marton. Peter Thompson says Over It wants to ‘keep it that way!’ and public support will help this happen.
Support from Horowhenua and Kāpiti residents will also signal to both District Councils that: they don’t want their waste sent to a non-compliant, leaching landfill that regularly emits foul odours into the Hōkio community; that they want HDC to set aside money for a major ‘clean up’ of the site and they want new waste minimization strategies adopted.
Peter Thompson says the group is also Over It because they strongly support long-standing concerns of local Māori who’ve suffered on-going abuse of their rohe for years.