If you listen to this programme, you’ll know that over the past six weeks I’ve been expressing concerns about a new rubbish dump for Auckland in the Dome Valley near Wellsford.

Well, last week the dump came a step closer with little fanfare apart from a story on One News this Saturday.

The Minister for Land Information Eugenie Sage and Associate Minister of Finance David Clark approved Chinese-owned Waste Management NZ's application to buy 1010ha of freehold land adjoining State Highway 1 north of Auckland for the tip.

The land is classified as sensitive so Waste Management NZ's application had to go through official channels. Of course, it’s sensitive as it’s right by the main holiday highway and frankly it’s very pretty. They’re going to build the landfill on part of the Mahurangi Forest and Springhill Farm sites.

Now I’ve had three concerns. Firstly the land is lovely and a tip is not.

Locals are hyping up the possibility that leachates could invade the local river and poison the snapper spawning grounds of the Kaipara but I’m not so worried about that eventuality.

Secondly, it’s location and it’s implications. The plan involves building a roundabout in the middle of State Highway One in the Dome Valley. This is so the trucks delivering the junk can complete a right turn safely into the entrance to the tip road.

Now this gives me the heebee-jeebees because the Dome Valley is already an accident hotspot. And then there’s the not insignificant number of extra trucks that will be using the road. We’re talking 300 daily from day one and that’s expected to rise.

So an already congested and dangerous scenic highway gets 300 rubbish trucks on it. That sounds off, both in risk and aesthetics.

And finally, this year I’ve become more and more concerned at landfills being an inefficient and old-fashioned answer to the problem of our rubbish and time after time I return to incineration and power co-generation. It’s what Norway and Japan do very well.

And now a listener, Mark from Amberley has told me about a plant in Oahu, Hawaii.

In 2017 the H-Power plant dealt with more than 700,000 tons of municipal solid waste. 507,000 tons was converted to electricity, over 22,000 tons of metal were extracted for recycling, and the remaining 170,000 tons consisted of non-combustible material that was sent to the landfill.

H-POWER reduces the weight of waste by 75 per cent and the volume of waste by 90 per cent. This has extended the life of the landfill by saving hundreds of acres of landfill space. Plus, virtually 100 per cent of the ferrous and nonferrous metal mixed with municipal solid waste is recovered for recycling.

Using filters and magnets all the ash is collected, containerised and buried in the landfill. There’s no greenhouse gases and the plant provides just under seven per cent of the island's electricity.

Mark from Amberley reckons that if our local and national politicians paid just one visit to the plant they’d be sold.

And for all those thinking that they can do this because they’re got more people, the population of Oahu is 1.5 million. The same as Auckland’s. The whole country has a power and rubbish problem and yet here’s an answer staring us in the face.