Firms accused of contamination
Two companies accused of discharging contaminants onto a rural property from an old industrial site in Gore have been taken to the Environment Court.
The trial, before Judge Brian Dwyer, started in Invercargill yesterday and pits the regional council, Environment Southland, against Johnstone Construction Ltd and Marshalls Excavating Ltd.
Both companies have been charged with discharging a contaminant onto or into land from industrial or trade premises.
An Environment Southland summary of facts outlining the case says that in 2017 an industrial site in Mersey St, Gore, was being redeveloped, with Johnstone Construction engaged to demolish existing structures and build a service station.
In turn, Johnstone Construction engaged Marshalls Excavating to dispose of waste from the site, contaminated or otherwise.
The Mersey St site had previously been used for engineering. A site investigation revealed the soils were contaminated, with a preliminary report confirming heavy metals, the council alleges.
Marshalls Excavating arranged to deposit the contaminated material from the site to Timpany’s Landfill, and the cleanfill was to go to a rural property at WyndhamMokoreta Rd, owned by Bradley and Pamela Yorke, according to Environment Southland.
The council conducted an inspection at the Yorke property on July 24, 2019, and observed an area being used as a dumping site that contained non cleanfill items such as plastics, wooden items, metals and tyres, it says.
A company called Soil and Rock subsequently obtained soil samples from the Yorke site to test for contaminants, and the samples detected elevated concentrations of lead and zinc, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and asbestos fibre soils within the dumping site at the property.
Environment Southland’s summary alleges that due to the asbestos fibres being present in the material deposited at the property, it posed a risk to human health, while the heavy metals posed a risk to environmental health.
At court yesterday, Environment Southland lawyer Tim McGuigan said a key issue was whether or not the contaminants found at the Yorke property had come from the Mersey St site.
In response to questioning by Marshalls Excavating lawyer
Richard Marchant, Environment Southland senior investigator Glen McMurdo, the trial’s first witness, said he visited the Yorke property on July 24.
He had talked to Pamela Yorke who identified an area where Marshalls Excavating had levelled material it had transported to the site. But McMurdo said he did not know if it was the same area where the soil testing was done.
Marchant suggested that would not help the Environment Southland case.
McMurdo later said that from his understanding of the soil reports, the contaminants identified at the Yorke property were consistent with the contaminants earlier identified at the Mersey St site.
The trial is expected to continue this week.