Environmental protection workshop boosts awareness

EPA hazardous substances manager Ray McMillan held a workshop at the Rotorua Lakes Council. Photo/Ben Fraser

Representatives of New Zealand's Environmental Protection Authority have visited Rotorua in an effort to educate and help local councils understand how they can protect their residents from everyday chemical dangers.

EPA hazardous substances manager Ray McMillan said local councils were responsible for enforcing the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act in their respective districts.

This includes responsibility for all public and private places within their territorial boundaries.

Mr McMillan said many dangers went unseen and unnoticed, but could effect people in many different ways.

"These include hazardous substances used in everyday life like cleaning products such as oven cleaner, petrol in your car, chlorine in pools and pesticides when spraying weeds."

Seven regional and local councils were at the workshop in Rotorua and over the next few weeks further workshops will be held in Nelson, Palmerston North, Christchurch, Porirua, New Plymouth, Hamilton and Queenstown.

Those attending the workshops include hazardous substance enforcement officers and managers responsible for delivering regulatory services.

"We are trying to understand how they discharge their responsibilities, such as finding people with the necessary skills to the job, how to get training and how to get more clarity so we are covering the right areas of the law.

"This often requires a multi-agency approach and we want to be in touch with those agencies and help work to resolve those issues and offer them the support they need.

"The overall aim is to generate discussion about actual experiences on the ground and to understand issues and difficulties council staff face, and to develop system-wide approaches to overcome them."

He said the long-term aim of the workshops was to produce better outcomes for communities through more effective hazardous substance compliance activity.

"We want people to be safe and the environment to be protected."