Taranaki Regional Council iwi rep says nothing will change at leaching compost site

Hōhā: after years of breaches Keith Holswich is fed up with the polluting composter. Photo / Supplied

An iwi representative at Taranaki Regional Council says a smelly, leaky industrial composting site will continue to flout environmental rules and insult the council and mana whenua.

Remediation New Zealand's polluting site got the lowest 'poor' grade in the council's latest annual monitoring report, for "significant non-compliance" to its consents.

The remote site at Urutī, about 40 kilometres northeast of New Plymouth, was found to have been mixing chemically-treated sawdust with waste drilling fluids for 15 years, in breach of consents.

Keith Holswich – an iwi representative on the council's Consents and Regulatory committee since 2017 – said nothing had changed at Urutī and nothing would.

"Remediation New Zealand will keep doing what they're doing… they will continue to flout the rules, they'll flout the environment, they'll stick it in the face of Ngāti Mutunga and they're certainly sticking it in the face of the TRC."

"I'm hōhā (fed up) over this… and I simply say Mr Chairman shut them down or hit them in the pocket so hard they don't want to be there anymore."

"I've been polite for four-and-a-half years on this matter – I'm no longer polite, I'm sick of it."

Last May a TRC hearing committee refused to renew Remediation NZ's consents, but the company appealed to the Environment Court and can keep operating in the meantime.

Since 2001 the site has taken commercial waste, including oil and gas drilling cuttings, drilling fluids, and poultry farm waste, for composting and worm farming.

It has repeatedly breached its consent conditions including pollution of a stream that flows into the Mimitangiātua River.

TRC earlier found no composting had taken place for at least 10 years, with more than 20,000 tonnes of contaminated waste instead stockpiled on-site, which could take up to 40 years to break down.

Another iwi representative, Emily Bailey, asked what changes had been made to rules and policies to prevent a repeat case.

"Obviously the Remediation site was never a good idea in the first place, so do we have things in place to avoid this happening again?"

"And also, to be able to recover the costs – because there's a huge amount of money going into monitoring and chasing up these companies who are just flouting it all."

Councillor Donald McIntyre backed the iwi criticism.

"Are we being slack on this? How come they have got away with this for so long and we have not sat on them harder and enforced these rules with heavier fines?"

TRC's resource management director Fred McLay said compliance officers were monitoring and enforcing more than any other regional council.

The industrial composting site at Urutī is again under fire for breaking environment rules. Photo / Supplied

He said the denial of consents by the hearing committee was "a pretty strong signal."

"These matters have got to progress their way through the Environment Court system to find some sort of resolution."

McLay said there were improvements at the Urutī valley site over the past 18 months and environmental contamination from the treated sawdust was well below levels of concern.

"In the valley, there are some very complicated interpersonal things going on with parties, and in particular some parties have become very sensitised to odour, even very, very moderate intermittent noticeable odour."

The committee chair, councillor David Lean, told McLay "you've developed a wonderful sense of use of words."

Lean cautioned committee members against saying too much while the issue was before the court.

"While that sits on the table there's not a hell of a lot we can do."

"Even if we were totally upset or tried to action, um, it's dangerous to say too much more in a public sense."

Last year Taranaki's medical officer of health found the site was likely emitting hydrogen sulphide, ammonia, formaldehyde, benzene and other aromatic hydrocarbons.

Effects from the odours could be significant and include headaches, retching, depression, stress and loss of appetite.

The latest monitoring report, for 2020-21, found 83 complaints were received by TRC, with objectionable odour smelled by investigating officers on five occasions.

The report found elevated levels of barium, sodium, light organic solvent preservative, petroleum hydrocarbons and certain heavy metals.

Chloride was found in groundwater, but soil chloride was improving.

Over-irrigation had led to estimated nitrogen loading rates of 500 kilograms of nitrogen per hectare, and ammoniacal nitrogen was impacting on stream life.

DairyNZ's online guide to preventing nitrogen leaching into waterways said farm trials had found large increases in leaching at rates above 200 kilograms of nitrogen per hectare.

TRC issued four abatement notices and 11 infringement notices and requested three letters of explanation from June 2020 to June 2021.

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