‘What have they dumped in there?’
‘‘They call us the ladies.’’ Andrea Vance meets two women fighting plans to extend a waste dump near their idyllic homes.
Five years ago, Sally-ann Moffat found her dream home – a charming country cottage in a coastal valley. Across the road was a cleanfill site, where builders are allowed to dump non-polluting material from construction and demolition. But trees and hedges blocked it from view – and back then it was a largely quiet operation.
Moffat was also reassured that the council planned to shut the tip within three years, and replant it as a nature reserve.
Now Moffat and her Wainuiomata neighbours are locked in a frustrating battle over new plans to expand the cleanfill, and what they say are lax controls over what is dumped there.
They are preparing to do battle at a resource consent hearing in September. But locals aren’t hopeful: they say their complaints about toxic and prohibited dumping have gone unheeded.
They are horrified that the cleanfill, which sits on the banks of the Wainuiomata River, has grown significantly and is set to continue into the next decade.
But the Hutt City Council is in an invidious position. Housing development has grown exponentially in the Lower Hutt suburb, with 500 new homes announced last year, and the building waste must go somewhere.
Finding a new site would only provoke objections from another set of residents.
And last year, a Chinese ban on contaminated recycling plunged the sector into crisis. Instead of sending our kerbside recycling overseas, mountains were being stockpiled in depots.
The Coast Road residents have snapped photographs of plastic bottles at the cleanfill – and believe some of that waste has been dumped illegally there.
The constant noise and dust means only Moffat’s pedigree chickens, and her red Doberman Diva, now get to enjoy her pretty garden.
Even on sunny days, the stylist’s outdoor furniture goes unused. A persistent whine from the site, the clang of machinery and the crash of waste hitting the earth shatter the rural peace.
‘‘I get woken from 7.30am – there is a constant hum,’’ she says. ‘‘And a sound like a gun, where the tailgates of the trucks clang down. It is a loud sound that makes you jump.
‘‘I don’t go outside as much: the noise is insane and the clouds of dust in the summer.’’
Her neighbour Miria O’Regan has lived in the shadow of the cleanfill since it was first proposed in 2009, on the site of an old waste water treatment plant.
Residents objected: worried about noise, traffic, and flood protection for the site, which was assessed to be at risk of a one-in-100 year flood.
It opened in 2011, but they were assured it would close in April 2017. Up to 165,000m3 would be allowed to be dumped there in two stages over six years. Once it reached capacity, the area would be regenerated with native trees.
When it didn’t, O’Regan began asking questions, plunging her and Moffat into a Kafka-esque nightmare of bureaucracy and inscrutable processes.
‘‘Basically the council are hoping that Sally and I will just shut up and go away,’’ O’Regan says.
Moffat agrees. ‘‘They call us ‘the ladies’. Thanks, ladies, thanks for meeting with us.’’
The fight has become so draining and punishing that the women are now fundraising for $10,000 to hire experts to help them navigate the complex resource consent process.
‘‘They are evil geniuses,’’ Moffat says. ‘‘They are so clever, and hide behind power, privilege and processes because we don’t understand the processes.’’
One of the neighbours’ key complaints is that the process has been shrouded in secrecy.
While O’Regan spent months on the phone, and writing emails, to find out why tree planting was yet to start, council officials had quietly applied for an extension to the resource consent, allowing it to operate for another decade. That was granted in August 2017, but it took until July a year later for officials to tell O’Regan.
‘‘For months, I was actively ringing environmental officers, the councils, trying to speak to anyone, the mayor, our community board people. I could not get a response from anyone.
‘‘It was July before we even found out that there had been a new extension put in. They had totally spun me around.’’
It took another two months for the council to tell O’Regan and Moffat it was planning to increase the size of the cleanfill significantly, adding a third stage, before closing it in 2021. To add insult to injury, the council initially decided the latest resource consent application would be ‘‘nonnotified’’ – essentially meaning residents would not get a chance to make an official objection.
The council has since reversed that decision, after locals called foul. But only nine households will be allowed to submit on the plans at
‘‘... because it is Wainuiomata, and no-one can see it, it’s dumped here. With a low socio-economic population, [they think] these people aren’t going to complain or have the time or the money to complain.’’
Miria O’Regan
hearings in September.
This is not the first time Wainuiomata residents have had to create a stink over waste management.
A previous cleanfill, at Waiu St, was at the centre of a stoush in 2009 when the council dumped truckloads of toxic sludge from Lower Hutt’s Waiwhetu Stream, one of New Zealand’s most polluted waterways, at the site. It later closed.
And locals fought a years-long battle against a battery factory over a history of dumping sludge in a nearby landfill, and lead contamination of Wainuiomata Stream. ‘‘[Officials] also told us the Exide stuff was safe but it wasn’t, it was poison and it was leaching down into our river,’’ O’Regan says.
She adds: ‘‘I think it wouldn’t happen in many other places around the Hutt Valley. But because it is Wainuiomata, and noone can see it, it’s dumped here.
‘‘With a low socio-economic population, [they think] these people aren’t going to complain or have the time or the money to complain.’’
Moffat and O’Regan have been complaining, repeatedly drawing the council’s attention to what they say are ongoing breaches of the resource consent.
The Ministry for the Environment sets very strict rules for what can be dumped in a cleanfill site. It must be: ‘‘Material that when buried will have no adverse effect on people or the environment . . . free of combustible, putrescible, degradable or leachable components.’’
Hazardous substances, materials that may present a risk to human or animal health such as medical and veterinary waste, asbestos or radioactive substances and liquid waste are all forbidden.
Residents have supplied Stuff with multiple photographs, which show mounds of plastic bottles, dumped tyres and polystyrene at the site.
One, taken recently, shows a damaged container of surface retarder, a chemical solution used on concrete, from the nearby Rockbond plant in Petone. When
Stuff visited the site last month, tyres and plastic guttering were visible on the slopes.
Residents are also worried that hydro-vac trucks – used to excavate clay, sand and gravel from construction sites with a pressurised hose – are dumping liquid solution on the site.
Photographs also show rivers of sludge running down the site’s slopes, close to the river. And sediment, dust, rocks and gravel is spread on the Coast Road, which is popular with cyclists.
Late last year, Mayor Ray Wallace asked former city council chief executive Tony Stallinger to investigate complaints. But O’Regan and Moffat are unhappy with his findings, sent to them in a letter in December.
‘‘We were told they were allowed a ‘small amount’ of inert material – and so there might be one or two [bottles] within that load. But the thing is, glass and plastic [being dumped] sounds different to concrete and I can hear more and more of this happening,’’ Moffat says.
Stallinger wrote: ‘‘We have . . . spoken to the cleanfill operator about this issue. He advises that relatively small quantities of plastic bottles are occasionally received, and this is allowable under the definition of acceptable cleanfill material.’’
The ministry’s guidelines say: ‘‘Small quantities of building plastics such as pipes and plastic sheeting amongst a matrix of cleanfill material are acceptable. A large quantity of plastic on its own or with other combustible material may present a fire hazard . . . Plastics used in domestic or industrial situations . . . are unacceptable as they are typically used as containers and may be contaminated with other materials.
‘‘Restrictions would need to be placed on the total quantity of plastics and/or other types of materials that can be placed with the plastics to control the risk of combustion.’’
Stallinger admitted sediment was discovered on the road, but said the operators had agreed to install a wheel wash for trucks.
O’Regan points out that is optional for drivers. ‘‘And it’s too late. There has been sediment on the road continuously for seven years – it is not supposed to be there because it can wash off and go into the waterways.’’
On the tip’s northern boundary is Ngaturi Park, junior rugby and soccer fields and a playground.
The cleanfill is surrounded by blackberry, gorse and broom. On one side of the valley native trees carpet the hill, on the other side lies the borders of the Remutaka Forest Park.
The 7.5ha site sits alongside the Wainuiomata River, a slowmoving, brown trout fishery that meanders through the valley to a lagoon and the wild Baring Head coastline.
A listed Water of National Importance, it is home to threatened native fish like the long finned eel, whitebait, lamprey and giant ko¯ kopu, as well as grey duck, black swan and paradise shelduck.
Over the next 10 years, conservationists plan to restore the lower reaches of the river. But Moffat and O’Regan fear the cleanfill expansion throws that regeneration into doubt.
‘‘I work with the Remtaka Forest Trust – kiwi come down here on to the boundary, the kereru¯ are abundant,’’ O’Regan says.
‘‘We have about 50 eels that we feed in the tributaries of our river. This is our environment – and even though they say it will be done in a few years, it’s not about that. What have they dumped in there? There are no controls here at all.’’
Moffat adds: ‘‘It is supposed to be a reserve. I moved to Wainuiomata because of the peace, tranquillity and the nature. I live between a river and a forest park and I know that that flood plain is being polluted because I have seen it with my own eyes.
‘‘This is the gateway to the Orongorongos and you drive past what is essentially a tip.’’ Dimac, the company contracted to operate the cleanfill, did not respond to a request for comment.
Hutt City Council’s acting general manager, Helen Oram, said via a spokesperson that the cleanfill is regularly checked by compliance officers. The latest visit was on July 25.
‘‘At this site visit there were no observations by our compliance staff of non-compliant materials onsite. If complaints are received by the team then these are investigated fully, and where necessary compliance issues are raised with the operator.
‘‘As part of the conditions of granting the consent, all loads to the cleanfill are to be from customers approved by the operator. If non-cleanfill material is found this is required to be removed.’’
In May, Greater Wellington Regional Council (GWRC) and Hutt City Council compliance officers found ‘‘suspected’’ medium density fibreboard (MDF). ‘‘The matter was raised to the operator, it was investigated and changes have been made to ensure compliance,’’ Oram said.
Council compliance officers observed sediment slurry being deposited to the cleanfill, she says, but that was allowed by consent conditions, as it is contained and allowed to dry before being incorporated into the cleanfill.
However, Moffat and O’Regan both say they have observed occasions when that has not occurred and liquid waste has gone directly into the cleanfill.
GWRC compliance officers also monitor the site twice a year ‘‘and have confirmed that the appropriate sediment and erosion controls are in place to ensure that neither material in the site, nor any stormwater run-off from the site, can enter the Wainuiomata River’’, Oram said.
The operators were working within the District Plan noise limits and concerns around traffic would be addressed in the new resource consent, she says.
The extension to the original consent ‘‘was applied for and granted without further notification, on the basis that the operating environment and consent conditions remained substantially unchanged, and in the knowledge that the extension would only allow operations to continue under the new consent for a limited period’’.
A planner, and other experts, assessed the effects of noise, management plans, odour, traffic, vibration, flooding and dust, and they are were all judged to be ‘‘less than minor,’’ Oram saids. ‘‘[This] is the test in the RMA which determines whether or not the application should be notified.’’
Submissions on the resource consent application close on August 16, with a hearing, in front of an independent hearings commissioner, on September 19.