Kate Valley landfill gets resource consents

By BOB COTTON


All 25 resource consents sought by Transwaste Canterbury to develop a regional landfill at Kate Valley in North Canterbury have been approved by a panel of commissioners subject to conditions.

The commissioner panel was established last year to hear all evidence and make decisions on the consent applications.

Transwaste applied for land use consents from the Hurunui District Council and land use consents and water and discharge permits from Environment Canterbury.

In a 225-page decision released yesterday, the commissioners concluded that it would be efficient for the proposed Kate Valley landfill to be used to its maximum capacity and accordingly granted 35-year consents.

The landfill can operate 7-days a week.

The commissioners acknowledged the significant level of opposition to the proposal. However, they concluded that the landfill will result in "no more than minor" adverse impacts on the local community's social, economic or cultural wellbeing, or on its health and safety.

Their decision also states that the landfill will "safeguard the life-supporting capacity of air, water, soil and eco-systems".

The commissioners imposed a number of conditions to avoid, remedy or mitigate the potential adverse environmental effects of the landfill operations.

These include:

* construction of an acceleration lane to accommodate the merging of heavy trucks onto State Highway 1

* the hours of transportation for trucks travelling to and from the landfill will be restricted to 7am to 9pm on weekdays, and 9am to 5pm at weekends and public holidays

* a range of limitations on wastes allowed at the landfill

* extensive monitoring and reporting conditions

The commissioners spent over four weeks hearing submissions for and against the resource consent applications for the landfill at a public hearing from November 2002 to February 2003.

Environment Canterbury Director of Regulation Dr Mike Freeman said Transwaste's application was very technical and required a huge amount of work by everyone involved, "with 22 days of hearings, more than 3700 people making submissions on the landfill proposal and more than 144 individuals or groups making presentations to the hearing panel in Amberley."

The applicant and submitters have 20 working days from when they receive the decision to appeal the overall decision or any conditions it contains to the Environment Court.

Unfortunately due to a reduced mail service over the Easter break, some of the parties who were involved in the hearing process will not get a full copy of the decision until next week.

Environment Canterbury says it has provided copies directly to as many parties as possible today. The full hearing panel decision is available on Environment Canterbury's website (www.ecan.govt.nz) or the Hurunui District Council's website (www.hurunui.govt.nz), Dr Freeman said.

Background to the decision:

Transwaste Canterbury is a public-private joint venture company. It is owned 50 per cent by six Canterbury Local Authorities (Christchurch City Council, Selwyn District Council, Waimakariri District Council, Ashburton District Council, Banks Peninsula District Council, Hurunui District Council) and 50 per cent by Canterbury Waste Services Ltd, another joint venture between two waste companies EnviroWaste Services Limited and Waste Management NZ Ltd.

The regulatory authorities involved were Environment Canterbury and Hurunui District Council. Because of the potential for a conflict of interest (HDC was both an applicant and a consenting authority), a panel of independent commissioners was established. Dr Mark Milke was initially involved but withdrew because of independent advice that his previously expressed views on landfills could give rise to a perception of bias.

The Hearing Panel considered applications to both authorities as the same time.

How long has the consenting process taken? A. Applications for resource consents to build a regional landfill were lodged by Transwaste with Environment Canterbury and Hurunui District Council in May 2002. The hearings were held in Amberley between 04 November 2002 and 04 February 2003.

- CHRISTCHURCH STAR