It is too early to tell whether any strong leads are emerging in the Wastebusters arson inquiry, but police say they are pleased with the response to their plea for information, photos and video footage.
''At the moment, we're still going through and processing a whole lot of information, so it's too early to make a call yet on whether there's any strong leads,'' Constable Sam Williams, of the Alexandra CIB, said yesterday.
Fire gutted the Central Otago recycling operation's processing building, staffroom and office and re-use shop on Thursday night.
Police launched an arson investigation after discovering an accelerant had been used to start the fire.
''We've had a good response already from people calling in and phoning up with information about the matter and we've also had some photos and videos of the fire, which is great,'' Const Williams said.
''We'd welcome any more and believe that will absolutely be the key to solving this case.''
The community had been shocked to learn the fire was deliberately lit, he said.
''... you can see how much it has affected the community.''
Central Otago District Council infrastructure manager Jon Kingsford said daily sampling was being carried out to check the groundwater had not been affected, because of the extent of the fire and how close it was to the water treatment plant and transfer station.
''To date, results have not identified any cause for concern.''
The chance of contaminants in the groundwater and the chance of the water reaching the water source bores was ''very minor ... but we are not making any assumptions or taking anything for granted in relation to these remote possibilities ''.
Fire-fighters from three volunteer brigades poured 250,000 litres of water on to the site to douse the blaze, he said.
The Wastebusters team will be back in business today carrying out commercial collections and servicing rural recycling drop-off facilities.
The drop-off recycling container on Boundary Rd should be available from tomorrow and next week, Wastebusters hoped to have an area on site reopened for larger loads of recycling material.
People with donations of reusable and saleable goods are asked to store those items at home until a temporary re-use shop has been set up.
