Tourists in the Mackenzie Country are going to great lengths to avoid paying $1.50 for a toilet, and the district’s ratepayers are cleaning up after them. Mackenzie District Council today considers a staff report recommending that people pay to use more of its public toilets, including blocks in Fairlie, Burkes Pass, Lake Tekapo and Twizel.
The council runs 25 public toilets across one of New Zealand’s busiest tourist corridors, the route that carries visitors from Christchurch past Lake Tekapo and Lake Pukaki to Aoraki Mount Cook and on to Queenstown. Three of those toilets already charge. According to RNZ, the charges have had some unwelcome side effects.
Mayor Scott Aronsen told RNZ that people had started dodging the paid toilets altogether. Some drove on to free toilets elsewhere, some headed into cafes, and some did not bother with a toilet at all. “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 busloads of tourists arriving to use their toilets and leaving without buying anything. The knock-on effect has also shown up at the council’s own free toilets. The Burkes Pass block, once little used, is now in heavy demand.
The numbers explain why the council is looking for another answer. A report to the council by Neil Jorgensen, its general manager of operations and regulatory services, says the district’s toilets receive about 900,000 users a year. They bring in about $80,000 in revenue but cost about $800,000 a year to run, Local Democracy Reporting said in a story published by 1News. Aronsen told RNZ the $800,000 maintenance budget was about four percent of the council’s total rates take 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. He added that not every ratepayer benefits from tourism, which is why the district does not want residents carrying the whole bill.
The proposed district-wide toilet strategy would bring in user-pays systems at the facilities on Fairlie’s Main Street, at Burkes Pass, on Lakeside Drive in Lake Tekapo and in Twizel’s main centre. RNZ reported that the recommendation covers three sites in Tekapo in total. The report also suggests a user-pays pilot at the Lake Pukaki facilities, which sit on Meridian Energy land, to gauge demand.
Not every toilet would carry a charge. The facilities at Lake Opuha, Edwards Stream, the Pukaki Canal campsite and the Tekapo town centre would stay free, although all of those except the Tekapo town centre block are long-drops. The council would also add electronic donation technology at toilets and campgrounds around the district, including Ruataniwha, Edwards Stream and Lake Wardell, so visitors can choose to chip in.
The current fee is $1.50 for an electronic payment and $2 for coins. Prices for the new sites have yet to be confirmed.
The council’s path to this point has not been smooth. User charges first came in under its 2025/26 Annual Plan, with paid systems installed at the Tekapo footbridge and at Hamilton Drive. The footbridge charge was later removed after the council decided only non-urban sites should charge, but councillors voted unanimously in April to switch it back on because of the high cost of maintenance. At the time, the council said the Hamilton Drive facility had brought in about $25,000 a year in gross revenue.
Money for the expansion is already lined up. In July the Government announced $2.5 million from the International Visitor Levy for Mackenzie’s toilets, part of a $3.8 million package shared with Queenstown Lakes. Tourism and Hospitality Minister Louise Upston said then that both districts welcomed large numbers of visitors each year, “placing significant pressure on infrastructure normally funded by ratepayers.”
Aronsen told RNZ that the funding, administered through the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, would cover the new user-pays toilets, donation devices at four toilets and an upgrade at one site. He hopes the machines will be running before the peak summer season.
He also suggested the rest of the country is watching. “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.
The Mackenzie is not the only place wrestling with who should pay for the basics that visitors use. Small districts with few ratepayers and very large visitor numbers have long argued that the cost of toilets, rubbish and car parks falls unfairly on locals. Plans to charge overseas visitors at some of the country’s most popular natural attractions, such as Cathedral Cove, come from the same pressure.
The toilet problem also cuts both ways. A small charge that raises money at one block can push people to the next free one down the road, or behind the building, which is exactly what the council has seen since the first charges came in. Wider coverage, free long-drops at remote spots and optional donations are the council’s attempt to close those gaps without leaving travellers with nowhere to go.
Whatever councillors decide today, the test will come this summer, when campervans, rental cars and tour buses return in force to the lakes and the road to Aoraki Mount Cook.
Would you pay $1.50 or $2 to use a public toilet on a road trip, or should the Government cover the cost of facilities that mostly serve visitors? Share your view in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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