In what Clutha District Mayor Bryan Cadogan described as being blindsided, the Mt Cooee landfill, the only sanitary landfill in the district, is projected to run out of room by August this year.
The council will have to pay $157,000 a month to get rid of the rubbish elsewhere.
Council staff said things had changed markedly through the consent process for the landfill as the dump filled up quicker than predicted.
Even if it was granted consent tomorrow, it would not be soon enough to get the new landfill built before the old one runs out.
At a Clutha District Council meeting on Thursday, council head of infrastructure operations Jason Foster said, in a report, despite the ongoing progression of the new consent application, Mt Cooee landfill area was critically close to capacity.
"Previously it was thought there was just enough time to have the consent and undertake construction. We now understand that consent will not be completed in sufficient time to design and construct a new landfill cell before the existing and any extra capacity obtained is completely exhausted," he said in the report.
Council needed to take immediate action.
There will be no more space by August although a redesign of the landfill closure plan could create some extra space to extend capacity until early next year.
Once the space was full, the only cost-effective solution was to ship waste out from Mt Cooee to a third party landfill such as Winton and Dunedin.
This will push waste costs up with a projected increase of $157,000 a month.
Cr Dane Catherwood wondered why the council had to wait so long.
Others suggested using old dumps or shipping waste in outlying areas over the borders to other districts.
The consent process was at the limited notification stage overseen by the Otago Regional Council.
Mr Cadogan was blindsided by what had happened.
"It does my head in. Us as a council, we are in an austerity measures. The newspapers and biscuits have been stopped, but now we are on the hook for $150K a month," he said.
"We sat here and argued over 50c for a pool and look at us now. We are up for $150,000 a month. "I do not get it. We have to do Three Waters, we have to do the roads. Now we have $157,000 to pay. It really gets me."
He suggested using old dumps but staff said that was not possible.
Council chief executive Steve Hill hit back at criticism of staff.
A combination of factors had led to the current situation.
The resource consent renewal for the landfill had been going for five years. Early reports to the council showed there was no issue with Mt Cooee landfill becoming full and it was under utilised.
"Then there was a big construction blip and demolition increased across the whole district . . . projections [for the life of the dump] went out the window," Mr Hill said.
He said staff could only go on the information they had at the time.
He said the whole environment for waste had changed and council had to consider all options.
"You talk about us and what we haven’t been doing but the whole environment, the whole waste environment, the tonnage environment has changed."
"And the consequence of that is we find ourselves up against the wall."
