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Some people are pooing behind Mackenzie District public toilets and tourists are swarming into cafes to avoid spending money on user-pay loos but the mayor says more pay-to-go toilets are needed to help reduce the burden on ratepayers.
Three of the Mackenzie District Council's 25 public toilets are user-pays, but overwhelming pressure from a large number of tourists has resulted in a staff recommendation to make people pay to use more and request electronic donations at others.
A report being considered by the council on Tuesday recommends introducing payments for toilets in Fairlie, Burkes Pass, three sites in Tekapo and the main block in Twizel.
Staff also recommended setting up a system to enable electronic donations in Ruataniwha, Edwards Stream, Punatahu/Pines and Lake Wardell.
Mackenzie District mayor Scott Aronsen said the user-pays toilets had been introduced because of the growing cost of maintaining and cleaning them.
He said the council budgeted $800,000 for toilet maintenance, which was around four percent of the total rates take, in the last year.
"The burden on our ratepayer was just becoming larger and larger. High tourist traffic flow coming through and the toilets were just getting hammered," he said.
"Our cleaners would come through three times a day, that is between Fairlie, Twizel and Tekapo, and within half-an-hour they'd need to be cleaned again. It just becomes unsustainable from a financial perspective.
"With the influx of tourists that we are expecting this year it just keeps adding and adding waves of costs on our ratepayers and not every ratepayer benefits from tourism, that's the important thing to remember here.
"We have pensioners and people who don't work in tourism or benefit directly from tourism. We've got to be able to spread that cost a bit more."
The first three user-pays toilets were introduced in mid 2025 and charge $1.50 a visit, but Aronsen said they brought unintended consequences including people avoiding the use-pays toilets to use other free public toilets, tourists charging into cafes and people pooing behind the toilets.
"People pull up and then just go around the back. Our contractors are having to clean up human excrement from around the back of the toilet block when they shouldn't have to. I hear about that on a regular basis," he said.
Aronsen said cafe owners near Lake Pukaki had reported bus loads of tourists turning up to use the toilet and leaving without buying anything.
The council had also seen a flow-on impact on its other free public toilets, with the formerly little-used Burkes Pass toilet now in hot demand.
Aronsen said the council had $2.5 million in funding from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment to cover the cost of the new user-pays toilets, devices to enable donations at four toilets and for a toilet upgrade at one site.
"I think the central powers are interested to see how we deal with it this coming season and whether or not it is something that should be implemented elsewhere. If it works well for us then I'm sure we will see some other regions follow suit in other some shape or form," he said.
Aronsen hoped the user-pays and donation machines could be working before the peak tourist season this summer.
