Tough new rules to improve air quality

By KEVIN TAYLOR

The cost of home heating will rise next year for many people when new air quality rules take effect.

And industrial incinerators will be forced to get consents or face closure.

Under the rules, new woodburners will have to meet improved emission standards from September next year.

Complying models will be $200 to $300 more expensive than non-complying ones.

Other regulations will:

* Ban many types of open-air burning, including tyres, bitumen for road maintenance, landfill fires, oil, and coated wire, from October.

* Ban all school and hospital incinerators from October 2006 unless they get consent.

* Prohibit any new hazardous waste incinerators.

Environment Minister Marian Hobbs, who announced the regulations yesterday, said they would save about 625 lives by 2020 by improving air quality.

It is estimated 970 premature deaths occur annually from inhalation of small polluting particles - especially those less than 10 microns across, the diameter of a human hair.

Ms Hobbs said the regulations would cost councils and the community about $110 million between now and 2020.

But their financial benefits would be about $318 million.

Most of the cost will fall on district, city and regional councils. They will pay between $50,000 and $200,000 each a year in extra costs to implement the standards.

The rules will do little to alleviate Auckland's air pollution problems because they will not affect vehicles, says the Auckland Regional Council.

Between 70 and 80 per cent of Auckland's air pollution comes from vehicles.

The worst centres for air pollution are Christchurch, Nelson and Timaru but the problem is also bad in some North Island towns, including Hamilton, Tokoroa, Taupo and Rotorua.

The regulations will require regional councils to reduce particles measuring less than 10 microns across to less than 50 micrograms per cubic metre of air by 2013.


Auckland Regional Council air quality manager Kevin Mahon said that unlike the rest of the country - where most air pollution came from domestic heating - Auckland's pollution came mainly from vehicles.

He said the council was at the mercy of Government plans to limit vehicle emissions through new border and warrant of fitness controls set to start in 2006.

"We are very dependent on central Government's action on motor vehicles," he said.

"It's much easier to control discharges from domestic fires."

Mr Mahon said there were about 120,000 wood and coal burners and 42,000 open fires in the Auckland region.

This was 31 per cent and 11 per cent of all households in the region respectively.

But he said woodburners would not have to be ripped out and replaced with complying models until they reached the end of their useful life.

Ms Hobbs said she did not expect economic development to be hit by the regulations.

However, she said, new industries would need to adopt clean technology, and existing industries might have to upgrade before getting new resource consents.

Ms Hobbs said the Government was also developing environmental standards to cover drinking water quality.

Green MP Sue Kedgley said the standards announced yesterday did not go far enough. Industrial processes that polluted and contaminated the air were still allowed.

The party welcomed the mandatory levels for air quality, but felt it was absurd that it would take five to nine years to fully implement them.