Coast Care's Lorraine Adams has argued against the sand sausages since before the Waitaki District Council installed them as foreshore protection last year.
And now Ms Adams says if she had installed them as foreshore protection, instead of the Waitaki District Council, the Otago Regional Council would have ordered her to clean up the mess they had become on the beach just north of Holmes Wharf.
"It's just been a ... shambles from the start,'' she said. "They need to be removed now - immediate removal.''
The regional council granted the district council resource consent to install the sand sausages as coastal erosion protection, despite her protests and call for rock armouring.
But in July, last year, with work to install the sand sausages under way, the council said an offshore "one-in-seven year storm event'' in June removed too much stone, gravel and sand from the beach for the sand sausages to be properly installed, and the plans were scuppered.
Rock armouring was installed as an emergency measure and a retrospective consent was later issued by the regional council for the work.
A short stretch of sand sausages remained at the beach next to the Oamaru Creek little penguin reserve and now not only were the sand sausages emptying and falling apart, they were an eyesore, a potential environmental hazard, and were evidence of the council "shirking'' its responsibility, Ms Adams said.
Council assets group manager Neil Jorgensen said the sand sausages were "not looking too sharp'' and the council was working with the regional council and the engineer in charge of the project to fix the problem.
It was too early to say whether the sand sausages would be removed.
Otago Regional Council environmental services manager Martin King confirmed the council had been in touch with the district council about the sand sausages and was assessing its options.
