And the Otago Regional Council (ORC) has now for the third time indicated a new date for the application to be completed.
The ORC also said it was not uncommon for some consent applications to take more than a year to complete and the Dunedin City Council’s (DCC) consent to operate Green Island Landfill was not on hold indefinitely.
ORC acting regulatory general manager Joanna Gilroy said the DCC application to operate Green Island would be completed by the end of August.
"Further information can be requested for applications even when they relate to an existing activity.
"This is provided for under the RMA [Resource Management Act].
"A decision on if further information is needed is made on an application-by-application basis.
"This is a standard practice across all councils as it is provided for by the RMA.
"The application is not on hold indefinitely — information will be supplied by the applicant by the end of August and this is when it will come ‘off hold’," Ms Gilroy said.
Previously, the ORC said the application would be completed by the end of last month.
Before that, the ORC said the DCC application to operate Green Island would be completed in September last year.
The DCC’s consent to operate Green Island expired the following month, in October last year, but the RMA allows for consent holders to continue to exercise existing consents while applying for replacement ones.
The DCC initially filed its application in April last year.
Technical reports, including a human health and ecological risk assessment, remain outstanding.
ORC consents manager Alexandra King said the DCC was actively working to complete its application.
"It is not uncommon for an application of this scale to be on hold whilst the applicant prepares and submits further information," Ms King said.
Ms Gilroy said to date this financial year the ORC had received over 600 consent applications.
"Some of these applications are technical in nature, large scale with a number of reports, have the potential for effects on the environment or are missing some information, which means council needs to request it."
She provided three examples of similar applications that had been on hold for more than a year: Port Otago’s significant upgrade of Te Rauone Beach, on Otago Peninsula, which went to a hearing in December 2020; Cromwell Certified Concrete Ltd’s quarry expansion application, which went to a hearing in December 2021; and the DCC application to develop the Green Island landfill’s successor, the planned Smooth Hill landfill, which went to a hearing in May 2022.
At that hearing, DCC chief executive Sandy Graham told commissioners the council was actively progressing consents to extend the life of the Green Island landfill on its existing footprint.
For its part, late last year, the DCC said it expected to complete its Green Island application early this year.
On the DCC website it said it expected the Green Island landfill to keep accepting the city’s waste until about 2029.
The Government Electronic Tenders Service shows the DCC is looking for a contractor for leachate drainage work and earthworks.
