Immediate and short-term issues include odour, dumped rubbish being blown around, vermin such as rats, and scavengers like seagulls, which can carry disease. There are also problems like heavy traffic using the roads to the landfill, the noise associated with machinery working on the landfill and the public opinion that having a landfill in your backyard is a big negative and will lower property values. Medium term and longer-term problems include leeching from the landfill, which can poison surrounding soil and waterways. Other problems include the negative consequences of hazardous materials in the landfill causing contamination and a potential danger to human health. Old landfills can also slump so that future development on them is a problem. One of the basic issues with landfills is that they result in unusable resources that may otherwise have been able to be recycled. Landfills also give off methane gas as the contents decompose and can cause serious problems with fires starting inside the landfill through chemical reactions or spontaneous combustion. All of these are good reasons why the Kate Valley proposal is sited in a remote valley, which has soils and a physical configuration that will contain the proposed waste.
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There is strong support for the landfill from various people. Mainly these are the politicians that are responsible for waste management in our city and region. "It is unrealistic to expect zero waste to landfill in Christchurch within the next fifteen years, therefore we must develop a new landfill site" says Dennis O"Rourke, a Christchurch City Councillor. .
Residents living in Burwood, the site of the current landfill are keen to see that landfill closed for all the reasons that have been noted above. .
"I am sick and tired of living next door to a noisy, smelly dump. In a modern suburb we should not have to put up with a dump in our backyard" complains Leeann Watson, resident of Parklands.
