Air quality top of ECan complaints
Most of the complaints in the year ending July were about odour, smoke from burning, dust and other contaminants. Air quality and burnoffs remain the most common source of complaints for Environment Canterbury’s hotline.
The regional council’s incident response report reveals 3530 separate complaints in the year ending July.
About 88 per cent related to discharge to air, land and water, with the majority about odour, smoke from burning, dust and other contaminants.
ECan compliance delivery regional leader James Tricker said the numbers did not surprise him.
‘‘People can see or smell smoke and other burnoffs, so it’s natural they are the most common complaints. It’s fairly well established and the trends have been the same for several years.’’
All up, ECan issued 167 written warnings, 74 infringement notices, and 41 abatement notices off the back of public complaints, while five prosecutions have also been initiated.
‘‘Any prosecution is very resource intensive, so we have to be certain we have the evidence.’’
While air quality remained an issue, Tricker said it was also concentrating on industries such as the constructing sector.
‘‘We had a policy of on the spot infringement notices when it came to discharges of sediments to water, focusing on the Christchurch rebuild. We’ve set quite tight controls, but the industry has responded really well to them.’’
Last November, ECan implemented an elevated response protocol, where each zone team identified priority responses in conjunction with regionally significant issues.
‘‘On receipt of an incident, we check whether it requires a standard or an elevated response. Therefore, when multiple incidents come in at the same time, the elevated responses take priority.
‘‘All calls received are researched and evaluated to assess the potential environmental effects. Due to the high volume of reports, we respond to the most serious incidents first.’’
Tricker said there also had been an increasing focus on compliance for the rural sector through the Farm Environmental Plan (FEP) process, which had led to better results overall.
‘‘The FEP compliance model is one of looking at the whole farm, not just the number of cows . . .’’