Freedom campers are welcome on the South Island’s West Coast, but too many are leaving unwanted deposits behind, and a local mayor is calling for government help to clean up the problem.
Summer has brought an influx of visitors to the West Coast, but not everyone is playing by the rules.
The local mayor believes some people are displaying fake stickers, which say their campers are self-contained when they are not.
Westland District mayor Helen Lash told RNZ there was an increasing amount of excrement being found at camping sites along the coast, even as money to police the problem has dried up.
She said the fake stickers claiming the campers were self-contained were being seen on a daily basis.
“And it’s en masse, it’s not just one or two, it’s everywhere and there is a lot of them.”
She said government funding to help cover the policing of the problem dried up last year, “and I can’t say that we can put money aside to do that, and put that burden on the ratepayers – we’re a low rate base”.
“The money has to come from the ratepayers because there is no assistance from anybody else.
“And it’s not just the burden, it’s not a good look for a world heritage area, it just shouldn’t be allowed to happen.”
Human faeces have been found around the edges of where the campers park, and on the side of walkways.
Lash said the local council was responsible for an area spread over hundreds of kilometres, with a lot of different places for people to stop, but more toilet facilities were not necessarily the answer.
“We’ve got plenty of loos, we’ve got plenty of public toilets put in through the funding from the government some years back. But people don’t want to park there, they want to park by the lake, by a river, by the beach and there are not toilets in all those places.
“And I understand that, but I wouldn’t park in a place like that without a campervan that has a toilet that I was going to use. But unfortunately, there are a lot of people that don’t do that.
“I don’t think they would treat their own back yard like they’re treating ours, and that really disappoints me.”
Lash said the government needed to get on board with the problem.
“They’re busy saying we need more tourists, we need this type of tourists. Well, if that’s the case, they need to front up and tell us how they’re going to manage this and back us.”
