We the residents of, and visitors to, Ōtepoti Dunedin plead with the Dunedin City Council to abandon plans to build the Smooth Hill Landfill, near Brighton, at the headwater of the Ōtokia Creek.

Generations of children and their families have enjoyed swimming in the Ōtokia Creek and the ocean it flows into at Brighton Beach. We, the people of Aotearoa New Zealand are proud custodians of the land and water, and we know that we are borrowing its health from future generations. We expect our elected officials to share and reflect these values.

We believe the proposal for the Smooth Hill Landfill near Brighton contains no adequate assessment for leachate leakage resulting from severe weather events caused by the climate crisis or severe seismic events, and any risk of contamination occurring, no matter how small, in the Ōtokia Creek is unacceptable to us.

The health of our lakes and rivers is an important, nationwide issue that New Zealanders feel strongly about. The proposed landfill is not in accord with the objective of the National Policy Statement for Fresh Water Management 2020, to prioritise first, the health and well-being of water bodies and freshwater ecosystems.

While landfills as a means to manage waste may still be necessary in the short term, existing landfill infrastructure throughout the Otago Southland region can meet our needs until we make structural changes to reduce our need for landfill capacity. We implore the Dunedin City Council to proactively reallocate funding required to build the Smooth Hill Landfill to sustainable waste management initiatives that will develop our resource recovery and waste minimisation systems as we move towards the shared goal of a more sustainable, circular economy.