Dirty dirt scare sparks fury

By BERNARD ORSMAN and ELIZABETH BINNING

Emotions ran high last night at the first public meeting to discuss the dirty dirt scare, where people asked how the Auckland City Council could tag their properties as potentially contaminated in the absence of any hard evidence.

"I don't want a Lim [land information memorandum] report on my property when there is no proof of contamination," said Charlie Smith, one of more than 300 people to attend the meeting at Avondale College.

The college is on potentially contaminated land in the Rosebank Rd area of Avondale, one of the worst-affected areas in Auckland City.

The council yesterday started tagging potentially affected properties on Lim reports from a desktop study of old aerial photographs showing market garden and horticultural sites that were sprayed with herbicides, fungicides and insecticides.

This followed letters sent to 4872 potentially affected homeowners telling them they would have to pay for tests to find out if their properties were contaminated with DDT, arsenic, lead or copper.

"I have got a problem with you putting something on my Lim report that is not proven scientifically. A maybe or a could be is not good enough when it is going to affect the value of my property," said Peter Tate of Avondale.

"You have adopted the principle that we are guilty before we prove ourselves innocent," said Chris O'Brien of Epsom.

Other people were upset that the council had known about the problem since 2002 but had not said anything until last month, when the Herald was tipped off.

Avondale councillor Vern Walsh and city planning manager John Duthie assured the meeting there was no evidence that any of the potentially affected sites in Auckland City were contaminated. The council had simply ascertained that the properties were built on land once used for horticulture.

Mr Walsh said the Government should take responsibility and provide funding for a programme of soil testing. The Government approved the use of pesticides in 1903 and now the Resource Management Act said people could not have pesticides on their soil, he said.

"Auckland City wants this issue addressed nationally, and immediately. The Government needs to address this as a matter of urgency, for your sake, for the country's sake," Mr Walsh said.

Green MP Keith Locke, who attended the meeting, agreed it was the Government's responsibility to pay for and clean up the problem so people were not left wondering about it.

Speaking from Wellington after the meeting, Environment Minister Marian Hobbs said there was no point testing every property until the council checked its subdivision records to provide better information about the history of each area and the history of the soil.

"We have to know what were the crops on those lands, what were those crops treated with, where were the sheds. All they have identified are broad swathes of land. We don't know what was on that land. We don't know what chemicals were used on that land and then we have to know if topsoil was taken from that land and replaced with something else," she said.

One woman at last night's meeting whose property was on the council list said she had done a title search going back to 1923 and could prove the land was not used for horticultural purposes.

Meanwhile, the council has pulled a map from its website which matched a Housing New Zealand property map in the Tamaki-Glen Innes area.

Mr Duthie said the map mistakenly ended up on the council website along with the correct "master map" which identified all the potentially affected sites.

Panmure Community Action Group spokesman Keith Sharp said the discovery of the wrong map was worrying locals.

The threat

Auckland City says it has 4872 potentially affected residential properties.

Waitakere City has about 3000 sites.

DDT, arsenic, lead and copper from horticultural use pose a health risk.