Outcry at methyl bromide extension
IN OCTOBER 2010, THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION Authority (EPA) told the logging industry it had 10 years to stop releasing the significantly ozone-depleting gas, methyl bromide into the atmosphere.
That deadline elapsed in October last year, but industry calls for more time have now been granted for a fourth time with methyl bromide use more than doubling from 245 tonnes in 2006 to 663 tonnes in 2018. Three-quarters of a billion dollars’ worth of export logs were treated with methyl bromide in 2019, about a quarter of the total amount sent abroad.
The gas is used as a fumigant to kill pests on logs for export to India and China, pumped under tarpaulin-covered stacks of logs and then released into the air.
It is also toxic to humans and damaging to the ozone layer, and international agreements require it to be phased out.
Industry group STIMBR says full recapture is “impossible” and it has asked the EPA to reassess recapture requirements.
The EPA has now pushed the recapture deadline out to February 2022 to give exporters to India certainty they can fulfil orders.
“We say enough is enough. It’s completely unacceptable. We feel that what’s being lost sight of is the amount of this ozone-depleting neurotoxin that is used at the Port of Tauranga so close to where our kids play sport, the workers at the port and the residents nearby,” says Clear the Air Mount Maunganui spokesperson, Emma Jones.
“We don’t have the resources to keep fighting this and we just expect our institutions to do the right thing,” she adds.
Tauranga Moana Fumigant Action Group lawyer, Kate Barry-Piceno, says parts of the extension decision were unlawful, adding that some companies had sunk serious money into cleaner but more expensive alternatives expecting the deadline to be enforced, while those that did not were benefiting from the continued extensions.
“Ultimately the buck stops with the regulators. It is their job to force industry into line. It appears as if the Ministry for Primary Industries has, alongside the EPA, allowed the logging industry to not step forward into the space and show sound environmental leadership around the regulation that, at an international level, New Zealand had committed to,” she told RNZ. “The EPA is failing in its duty to protect the environment and the health and safety of people.”
An application to allow an alternative fumigant called EDN, developed and sold by the international Draslovka Group, has been before the EPA for nearly four years. The group says EDN has a negligible environmental risk and very low risk to health.