{"id":236570,"date":"2026-01-16T16:21:17","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T16:21:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/236570\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T16:21:17","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T16:21:17","slug":"leaders-to-meet-over-tourists-trashing-blue-spring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/236570\/","title":{"rendered":"Leaders to meet over tourists trashing Blue Spring"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Blue<\/p>\n

\nBlue Springs, near Tirau
\nPhoto: RNZ\/Carol Stiles\n<\/p>\n

The tourism minister says she has a meeting planned with the mayor to discuss concerns about the Put\u0101ruru Blue Spring being trashed by tourists.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, Waikato Regional Council chairperson Warren Maher shared his concerns<\/a> about the site, which he said was being trashed by tourists clogging composting toilets with rubbish, throwing coins in the spring and parking dangerously on the roadside.<\/p>\n

Tourism Minister Louise Upston told Morning Report she visited the spring on Thursday, and in general, she had witnessed sensible behaviour.<\/p>\n

She said businesses in the surrounding area were really positive about the influx of visitors spending money in the district.<\/p>\n

Maher had suggested a share of the international visitor levy could go to councils to keep tourist spots clean.<\/p>\n

Upston said there was funding available, including the International Visitor Levy, and some of the tourism funding was already spent on issues in hotspots – in fact, the majority of this financial year had been “on-demand”, she said.<\/p>\n

Regarding Put\u0101ruru, she understood the South Waikato District Mayor was considering a park-and-ride option to reduce the impact of visitors, and there were other options available to raise funds to pay for upkeep.<\/p>\n

“Access charging is always an option for councils, parking charges, to help offset some of the costs,” she said.<\/p>\n

She said they needed to consider whether it would be best to take action during peak visitor periods, or if a more long-term solution was needed.<\/p>\n

Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Blue Springs, near Tirau Photo: RNZ\/Carol Stiles The tourism minister says she has a meeting planned with the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":236571,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45],"class_list":{"0":"post-236570","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-podcasts","15":"tag-public-radio","16":"tag-radio-new-zealand","17":"tag-rnz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}