David Nottage: Ruapehu District Councillor on the rubbish dumping along the Desert Road detour

There's frustration about rubbish dumping along the Desert Road detour.  

State Highway 1 between Tūrangi and Waiōuru closed in mid-January for about two months of roadworks. 

The detour, which runs through State Highways 41, 47, 4, and 49 has seen a noticeable rise in rubbish.  

Ruapehu District Councillor David Nottage has been picking up the rubbish himself. 

He told Andrew Dickens it's more than people throwing a few things out the window.  

Nottage says it's hard to believe people are carrying that much around while they travel, so they may be taking advantage. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Not looking good and pay Who roadside dumping is an
increasing problem along the Desert Road. Deep Tour n ZTA
have received backlash for the handling of the rubbish and
it's clean up. So the real pay Who District councilor
at David Nottage has now taken to collecting the rubbish
in his Purser truck and David joins you now, Hello, David,
good on you man, good morning.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Good morning. Yeah, it's bit of a I don't know
if it's this bad timing for when I go driving
out on the State Hallway ball, but he just seems
that every time I'm out there, and well I've got
trucks and my youth, there's always seems to be a
lot of rubbish out there.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
Well, good on you on your dedication to public service. Mate.
So here's the thing. Is this rubbish directly correlating to
the deeptour being in place? Or have the people of
Rupey who just suddenly got messy.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Well it's hard to well, the last rest here I
cleaned up. It's hard to believe that travelers would carry
that much rubbish with them. And yes, people might be
taking an advantage of the you know, the detour, but yeah,
the last one here, there's lots of lots of recyclable

(01:07):
stuff on their cans, you know, bottles, plastic bottles, and
I just yeah, just general household rubbishpins dump there as well.
It's all on black bags. I tried to see if
it could actually you know, band black so bags as well.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
So it's tourists not truckings.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Uh, well, no, we don't know, you know, un least
we you know, you know, I don't see anyone doing it,
but it just seems to appear.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
Should should it ends it? Here's the thing? Should endz
in ta be stepping up his rubbish rubbish collection frequency
so you can step down.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
Yeah, it would be nice, But it would also be
nice if tivys didn't throw their rubbish out, you know,
they pack it in. They should pack it out, you know,
take it home and you know, dispose of it how
they should dispose of it. But yeah, it has been
disappointing that they may be a contingency for the amount
of rubbish that could appear on our road. You know,

(02:06):
it could have been mitigated, I think.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
Yeah, and how is this detour affecting the local economy?
I know that Johnny Nation's Bakery and Akuny is doing
roaring business, is it. Are there wins and losses?

Speaker 2 (02:21):
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think from what we've been told
that you know, it's not just Oakuni that's having a
bit of a windfall National Park rather he Wanganui. Yeah,
I know it's tai happy and bulls maybe in Wau
might be striking a little bit. But you know, once
the detour comes off, I'm pretty sure that you know,
the economy will will go back to how it normally is.

(02:44):
But hope, we're hoping that more people will use State
Highway for once the desert road and you know see
that it's just as pretty as the desert road. It's
not prettier, absolutely, as long as they keep their rubber
from their car.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
Good good call, David, and thank you so much for
what you've been doing. David Nottage's a council at the
rue pe Hoo District Council.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
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