Rubble from the ruins stacked 25m high

DAVID WILLIAMS

Last updated 05:00 07/05/2011

 

A mountain of rubble is rising from the ruins of Christchurch at a makeshift landfill in the east of the city.

The Burwood resource recovery park in Bottle Lake Forest Park has about 100,000 tonnes of rubble in stacks up to 25 metres high from the wreckage caused by the deadly February 22 earthquake.

Initial estimates were that 4.25 million tonnes of rubble and 380,000 tonnes of silt would be recycled at the site, which was set up by the city council in March.

Civil Defence last month revised the estimates to 8 million tonnes of rubble and 500,000 tonnes of silt and sand.

EcoCentral, owned by the council's investment arm, is one of three joint-venture partners operating at Burwood.

General manager Robert Gerrie said 100,000 tonnes of rubble was already there, although the amount of material arriving had slowed since the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (Cera) took over the cleanup from Civil Defence.

The park covers one-eighth of the 845-hectare Bottle Lake Forest.

"It's wholly designed to recycle it; to put the aggregate [broken-up concrete for construction], steel and glass and bits and pieces back into the Canterbury region as a recycled product," Gerrie said. "I imagine there's going to be quite a bit of aggregate reused when we start rebuilding."

It is thought it may take five or six years to recycle and sort all of the material being stored at the site.

Civil Defence director of planning and transition Baden Ewart said 2 million tonnes would come from inner-city deconstruction and demolition, 2 million tonnes from residential and suburban commercial areas and 4 million tonnes from repairs to roads and water and sewerage pipes. The target is to recycle 65 per cent of residential waste and 85 per cent of commercial waste.

Canterbury Waste Services general manager Martin Pinkham said the volume of waste being taken to its Kate Valley landfill was dropping.

Waste volumes spiked in September at 34,275 tonnes and in March at 35,597 tonnes. The other eight months of the financial year averaged 19,415 tonnes.

- The Press