‘Arsenic’ talk poisons plant perception
The company behind a proposed furnace to deal with Marlborough’s stockpile of treated vineyard posts has shot down the presumed health hazards mooted by residents, with its boss saying he would happily live next door to the plant.
Waste Transformation chief executive Mike Henare said emotive language, words such as ‘pyrolysis’ and ’arsenic’, had stirred residents into a frenzy, but the science was on their side.
Henare also pointed out the company was invited to Marlborough by the council, which needed a clean solution to a messy problem. He said the plant far exceeded the environmental standards required, and he was disturbed at claims being made by people opposed to the plant.
Henare was going to take the house next to the plant, at Blenheim’s Bluegums Landfill site, but it was given to another landfill operator.
‘‘I would have no concern with living right next door. I ran the Timaru pyrolysis plant myself for 12 months,’’ he said.
I would have no concern with living right next door. Mike Henare
Henare had held public meetings to keep people informed. He said one major concern was around what might be going into the atmosphere.
‘‘When we first looked at Marlborough we put our operating process under the toughest conditions possible - conditions we would never actually face,’’ Henare said.
‘‘We did this purposefully to demonstrate what we were doing was of no harm to the community.
‘‘We doubled everything - we doubled the amount of arsenic going through the process, doubled the amount of timber - we gave ourselves a worst-case scenario.’’
Even with the plant operating far beyond what it would face in reality, it would emit less than 5 per cent of the allowable guidelines - guidelines already obliging very low emissions.
‘‘At the nearest contact with the Blenheim community, we are less than 1 per cent of the allowable guidelines.’’
He said emotive language appeared around the idea pyrolysis burnt the arsenic-treated vineyard timber post waste.
Pyrolysis was a bio-degrading process, rather like baking, where extreme heat reduced the posts to their key ingredients which could be recycled.
‘‘The diesel burners used to fire the system is the same as adding 10 more approved household wood burners to the town. That’s our operating emissions.’’
Henare said ‘‘arsenic’’ obviously had toxic connotations.
‘‘It’s an element, also found in nature. It can’t actually be destroyed.
‘‘I don’t know what .0001 of a microgram would actually look like. The current safety standard is .0055. It’s minuscule, and rightly so. At .0001 what we will emit is probably about the same as what is currently in the soil naturally.
‘‘The regulations set out by the Ministry for the Environment are worldwide guidelines, and they are very, very small, and that’s for a very good reason.
‘‘We are so much smaller than even those guidelines which they consider safe. We’re almost at the stage of not being measurable, from an emissions point of view.’’
‘‘We were approached to come here, we didn’t put up our hands to come. We’ve worked very hard to provide a solution of both benefit and safety to a community we would be happy living in.’’
Protesters were mostly people who had bought into the nearby Boulevard Park on Taylor subdivision which had been promoted by the council. Their concerns included perceived drops in property values, and their own scientific claims about the process that were significantly at odds with Henare’s figures.
Group leader Alan Hall said exporting what was effectively toxic waste in the recycled charcoal was ‘‘immoral’’. He said the arsenic released by the process would be enough to contaminate household vegetable gardens in Blenheim.
The protesters said they understood something needed to be done about the old vineyard posts, but they wanted it done somewhere else.