Collie Shire chief executive officer Jason Whiteaker yesterday warned that council may sift through rubbish to identify people who may have dumped it in an area just east of the tip.“People need to be careful as it is amazing what you can determine by looking through the rubbish, which is not pleasant, but something we may consider in order to get a prosecution,” he said.

Mr Whiteaker said the rubbish had been an issue for many years.

“We can’t address every issue on land which isn’t under the control of council, as it belongs to the State,” he said.

Mr Whiteaker said council had raised this issue with the appropriate State Government agency.

“We will work with the State on this one to try and ensure that the issue is addressed,” he said.

Mr Whiteaker said people who dumped their rubbish so close to the tip were obviously lazy and did not care about the environment.

“We had this issue when the tip was open 10 hours a day, seven days a week. There is no other explanation than people being lazy.

“We may get people responding to the reduced tip hours by dumping their rubbish ‘in the bush’ and if this is the case I think most people in our community would be disgusted.

“We have made a decision on the hours and management of the rubbish site with the view to ensuring the longevity of the site.

“Once this site is finished, we don’t have a whole lot of options except to go regional and then the cost to the community will escalate.

“People need to understand that if the rubbish site continued to be managed in the way it was we estimated we had five to six years life. With the new initiatives we are hoping it will be more like 20-25 years.”

Mr Whiteaker said he hoped the issue would not get worse when the new tip pass system comes into effect in August.

“Providing passes is hardly putting this community at the forefront of initiatives,” he said.

“Tip pass systems are used in the majority of other communities, and our hours of opening are still generous in the context of the research we did of other rubbish sites.

“People generally don’t like change, but hopefully the community can see the reasons behind our decision and support the new initiatives.”