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It could be an ordinary scene in any street in the new and developing part of east Auckland, except for the fact someone’s dumped a broken and unwanted fridge on the grass berm not far from a row of tidy two-storey houses.
Sadly, it’s the sort of thing Simon Wilkinson sees frequently.
His business, Wilkinson Environmental Ltd, is receiving funding from the Howick Local Board to help identify the people who discard their rubbish on footpaths, berms and empty sections in Flat Bush.
That funding has enabled the installation of CCTV cameras in rubbish dumping hot spots, which has led to Auckland Council issuing fines to dozens of people for illegal dumping, Wilkinson says.
“We’re out there and we’re catching people. We’ve caught about 40 people in Flat Bush so far since we’ve installed cameras and they’ve all been fined between $100 and $400 each.
“If it’s little, like a bag, it might be $100 or $150. If it’s a few bags or a trailer-load it will go up to $400.
“Then if it’s a business or a really large load, they can be taken to court and the fines can go up to $30,000.”
One area that was an illegal dumping hot spot, off Flat Bush School Road, is now clean thanks to the CCTV camera that had been monitoring it.
But other locations, such as in Carrickdawson Drive, are still untidy.
At the front of an empty, privately-owned section was discarded children’s toys, a shoe, drink bottles, seven large plastic bags filled with green waste and two old and rusty gas bottles.
On the ground around the corner there’s several large pieces of timber, large cardboard boxes, and more general rubbish.
“They’re brazen,” Wilkinson says of the dumpers.
“On some of the footage I’ve caught, I’ve seen them do it while other people are sitting in cars parked [nearby].
“It’s like those people don’t know to report them [the dumpers] and don’t know it’s illegal and they can report them, or they just don’t care.
“It becomes difficult when it’s on private land that’s owned by a developer.
“The council won’t remove rubbish from private land, so it’s really frustrating, but the council can get quite serious and they do have fairly substantial fines up their sleeves.”
Wilkinson says what surprised him is that almost all the people caught dumping in the spot near Flat Bush School Road were locals.
“They lived quite close. I thought it would be people coming from outside the area and dumping, but actually they’re just lazy.”
The scale of the problem in Flat Bush is about the same as when the Times first reported on Wilkinson’s work in September last year.
“Where we’ve put the cameras, we’ve noticed a slow down because we’ve caught people,” he says.
“The people we’ve caught have been every ethnicity, age, and sex that you can imagine.
“We’ve caught people with fancy Ford Ranger utes and people with tiny little cars.”
People can report illegal dumping to the council on 0800 663 867.
