Is Auckland water safe?
An interesting Environment Court case starts today in Auckland. Joel Cayford has blogged a background to it here and further updates are on his blog.
He has written to Len Brown saying:
I am writing to you because I have recently become aware of a major issue for Auckland. I am at a loss to understand how Three Kings Quarry owner, Winstone Aggregates, was granted consent by the Auckland Regional Council a year and a half ago to fill the Mt Eden Road quarry, unlined and without a leachate collection system, with waste material that is permitted to contain elevated levels of contaminants including arsenic, copper, zinc, DDT and hydrocarbons.
This and other related resource consent decisions have been appealed to the Environment Court. I understand this appeal is set down for a two week hearing beginning Monday 7th March.
Have you considered Auckland Council’s position in regard to this matter?
The Mt Eden Road quarry – also known as Three Kings Quarry – is above, and drains into, a large fresh water aquifer from which water is already drawn by some (including Auckland Zoo), and which is a back-up drinking water source for Auckland in the event of a natural disaster, such as the one we have just seen in Christchurch.
Now I’m not personally across the science enough to assess what sort of risk is involved. And this is exactly why we have an Environment Court. But it does seem this is potentially a rather major issue, and one worth of scrutiny.
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March 7th, 2011 at 7:10 am
Oh good. This gets past the Environment Court, but Ikea in Mt Wellington doesn’t due to its own anticipated success.
Yeah, makes total sense.
March 7th, 2011 at 7:48 am
Joel was an ARC councillor at the time that the Winstone Quarry decision was made.
He can’t have only just discovered the decision made by his own council
The Three Kings Quarry has been in the news for the past 20 years. First in relation to the dewatering of the site during quarrying activies and now when it is to be filed, with clean fill, as i understand.
The issue will be scrutinised in the EC that’s why it’s going there.
March 7th, 2011 at 7:56 am
Well, the good news is that Cr Mike Lee of the Auckland Council was the Chairman of the old ARC that granted the consent.
He can explain the situation.
March 7th, 2011 at 8:43 am
Is this because a free swimming pool for Mount Eden was on his 100 projects in 100 days???
March 7th, 2011 at 8:44 am
Alex and George – the consents were granted in late in 2010 by Commissioners appointed by the old ARC and Auckland City Council – not by the ARC itself.
So ARC Councillors Cayford and Lee had no direct involvement themselves in the issuing of the consents.
March 7th, 2011 at 8:48 am
It’s the ARC, so it’s entirely possible that they are utterly incompetent. But the red flag is this:
My guess is that the consent provides for maximum levels of all these things, and those maximum levels are probably set based on some international standard that is deemed safe. And Joel is getting his knickers in a knot because that level isn’t set at zero. I doubt you could find some DDT in NZ to add to it – you haven’t been able to buy it for years.
March 7th, 2011 at 9:53 am
Toad,
They would have been aware of the commissioners decision.
It would have been an agenda item of the ARC and the relevant committee.
Dr Cayford is dissembling when he says he “recently became aware of the major issue”. Its been around for years.
The Winstone quarry at three kings has been an agenda item of the old ACC and ARC for over 20 years.
March 7th, 2011 at 10:07 am
Maybe Jaffas should start boiling their drinking and teethcleaning water before use.
March 7th, 2011 at 2:10 pm
Glad to see a little bit of discussion. I was a councillor – and so was Mike Lee – when the Winstone Aggregate resource consent applications under appeal were dealt with. Neither of us was a commissioner on that hearing.
I am sure that the decision to grant the consents (earthworks and other issues relating to a “cleanfill”) were reported on an agenda of the ARC’s Environment Ctte sometime in 2009. Along with 200 or so other resource consent decisions that are reported every month in summary form. It is very rare for any issue to arise from that Ctte report. I certainly didn’t spot it.
Then it appears someone, somewhere, recognised there was a water discharge issue as well with Winstone’s “cleanfill” proposal. But that had not been consented. So another application was filed in 2010. This one was handled very differently. As I understand it Winstone’s sought for it to be directly referred to the Environment Court. So ARC was by-passed on the matter of the discharge of contaminants to water side of the proposal.
I only got wind of it when a submitter asked me out for a coffee a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been looking into it.
The Env Court hearing started this morning. Winstone Aggregates will present their application and expert evidence over the first 3 or 4 days. Auckland Council will present their view of it. Then come submitters. Envirowaste is a major submitter. Who knows how the application will fare. I was there for a few hours while Winstone Aggregates got into their legal submissions. There was a lot of discussion led by Justice Smith from the bench. It looks as if the matter will turn on: what contaminants are permitted in the cleanfill (ie what can go into the quarry); what the risk of adverse effects is (either from what is permitted or from whatever else might get in there – eg from tippers seeking to avoid the $200/tonne charged for sanitary landfill); and how the conditions will work to ensure that anticipated risks (be it to aquifers, groundwater etc) are avoided, remedied, mitigated.
March 7th, 2011 at 3:39 pm
The overall consent appears to ask that they can dispose of cleanfill that has contaminants equal to the average contamination in Auckland topsoil. Their logic being that the quarry had relatively low contamination (by Akld standards), and they’d be taking fill from other parts of Akld that had higher background levels of copper etc. That sounds reasonable to me – unless we’re going to declare those other parts of Akld to be unsafe, then logically we’re still OK with those background trace elements when we move the dirt from one side of Akld to the other.
I’d be interested in more detail, but on the face of it this looks like people complaining for the sake of it, rather than having a legitimate grievance.
March 7th, 2011 at 3:53 pm
Before anyone jumps to any conclusions be alert to the fact that the story refers to “elevated” levels of certain metals.
“Elevated” does not mean toxic.
There is hardly any “elevated” level of copper that is toxic. Indeed copper levels in NZ tend to be so low that farmers in Northland inject copper into their cattle to keep them well.
Unfortunately it was this kind of confusion that generated the panic about contaminated residential sites in Auckland. The ARC report claimed that 5,000 sites were contaminated. I wrote a report to the ARC councillors challenging the protocol and when the issue was properly examined by an expert from Lincoln the number of contaminated sites reduced to six.
One of my footnotes read:
“Note that this Council statement continues to assume that an “elevated level” is somehow “unacceptable”. The implication is that raising the pH of soil is also “unacceptable”. Surely we need evidence of harm to reach such a conclusion.”
You can read the report at:
http://www.rmastudies.org.nz/library/49-pollution-soil-water-air/72-contaminated-soils-comparative-risks-there-are-no-health-risks-at-the-bottom-of-your-garden
March 7th, 2011 at 7:01 pm
PaulL’s comment reflects some of the discussion in the ARC’s assessment of the cleanfill application. ie that the soil and rock at Three Kings has a lower background level of contaminants than other parts of Auckland. However that is a small part of the story. There are a number of development sites in Auckland that need fill removed. Waterview is one, Wynyard Quarter is another, and there will be others. The definition of cleanfill that is mainly used is that it it “inert” material. ie won’t react with water, groundwater, to mobilise contaminants in ways that will adversely affect groundwater and aquifers that are fed by the groundwaters. I am not sure about aquifers few from around Waterview – but I am aware that the groundwaters from Three Kings flow into the Westmere Aquifer. Which is a recognised underground freshwater body, that is now used as a water source. McShane is right to draw attention to the word “elevated”. There is a good long list of contaminants and the levels that are deemed – by the present consent – to be acceptable. These include TPH (petroleum hydrocarbons) at 5,600 mg / kg. Or 0.5%. Those high levels are typical of soils that have received a lot of hydrocarbons over time and are regarded as contaminated. DDT is there as well – not because you can buy it now – but because it is a persistent contaminant that was used a while ago and is still present in some soils in some parts of Auckland. The issue is really about contamination risk, and what is appropriate in the way of conditions to protect the public’s interest in the future usefulness of underground water resources. It is also an issue that some waste businesses approach this issue responsibly – and do the right thing – and invest appropriately in landfill liners and leachate collection, when others exploit loopholes and offer the same disposal service on the cheap – but at the potential cost of future use of an aquifer when we’re all dead.
March 7th, 2011 at 9:28 pm
How reliable is a landfill liner? Seems to me the kind of thing that lasts for about 50 years, and then deteriorates. Is that particularly useful?