Councillors signed off on new rubbish fines yesterday, meaning culprits could be issued with infringement notices of between $100 and $400.
The council had not yet decided how the new approach would be policed.
At present, council staff needed to pursue a prosecution through the courts if a culprit was identified - a process which could be time-consuming and costly.
Under the new approach, first-time offenders dumping smaller amounts of litter could face a $100 fine, but penalties would rise for repeat offenders or incidents involving larger amounts of rubbish.
The new rules would apply to all public land the DCC was responsible for, but not that governed by other public entities, such as the NZ Transport Agency or Department of Conservation.
However, the rules could also apply on private land, and footage from CCTV cameras could be used to identify culprits, council solid waste manager Catherine Irvine told yesterday's meeting.
The Litter Act 1979 allowed councils to adopt litter compliance policies, subject to public notification, which would allow fines to be issued in Dunedin from July 1.
Ms Irvine, responding to councillors' questions last month, said strong evidence would be needed before someone was issued with an infringement notice. That could include a witness to the dumping, or the discovery of personal items among the rubbish that clearly identified the culprit, she said,
People could still object to a fine, triggering a hearing, and the new policy also left room for discretion, she assured councillors.
Cr Mike Lord questioned whether the policy could still backfire. He said he sometimes collected rubbish dumped on or near his Taieri farm, which he usually then put in public rubbish bins.
He worried people like him, who were doing the right thing, could be fined under the new policy, but Ms Irvine said that would be covered by officers' discretion.
``There has to be some discretion around it.''
But, after repeated incidents of illegal rubbish dumping across the city, the council needed to show it was serious about the problem, she said.
``We need to show we are really going to take action here,'' she said.
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Comments
Maybe if the council rubbish collection was more logical and collected what people wanted to dispose of rather than what the DCC wanted to collect, then there wouldn't be a problem. Why do so many people pay for a private rubbish contractor on top of paying DCC rates? Could it be because the DCC rubbish collection is just that....
Unfortunately the DCC weren't prepared to listen to their bosses, i.e. the ratepayers, who did try to tell them that this problem would arise with the steep increases in tip charges ... I'm not really sure whether they were deaf or just plain stupid 😜
The DCC needs to institute an annual hard rubbish collection day. It would pay for itself and solve much of the illegal dumping problem in one stroke.
Annual hard / oversize rubbish collection days are common throughout the US, Europe and Australia, and councils find them quite profitable.
I'm amazed we don't have them here. But then, this *is* the DCC, where people still pay for individual rubbish bags on top of the cost of their (soon to rise) rates!