Plan on voting? Do you care about the environment? Do you know your municipality’s plan to rehabilitate its landfill?

Municipalities are required in law to rehabilitate their landfill sites. Because of this legal requirement, municipalities are required to reflect this obligation in their financial statements. As the ASB, we have provided principles that municipalities apply when preparing their financial statements, including the reporting on landfills.

The financial statements of municipalities provide information about the:

• “landfill site asset” – which reflects the asset built to facilitate safe waste management, e.g. excavation, plastic linings, extraction pipes, etc. This will be reflected as a non-current asset on the statement of financial position.
• “rehabilitation provision” – which reflects the cash a municipality expects to pay over the period of the operation of the asset and beyond to rehabilitate, and monitor the rehabilitation, of the landfill site. This will be reflected as a provision on the non-current liabilities section of the statement of financial position.

Where can you access information? There are several sources, but these two are a good starting point.

• Municipal Money
• Auditor-General
• The budgets of each municipality are available on their websites.

This has been prepared by the Secretariat of the ASB and not the Board.