Dangerous chemicals in old and rusty containers and drums piled up are posing an environment threat.
Photo / Supplied
Dangerous chemicals in old and rusty containers and drums piled up are posing an environment threat.
Photo / Supplied
The Whangārei District Council is being forced to clean up a site storing more than one million litres of toxic chemicals after the owners failed to comply with various orders to do so.
An interim enforcement order by the Environment Court gave 10 days for the owners and operators of the solvent storage and disposal facility on Allis Bloy Pl in Ruakākā to clean up the mess.
Solvents and industrial chemical waste are stored in old, damaged, rusty and leaking drums and containers on the property pose significant risks to the environment.
WDC applied for and secured the interim enforcement order against Sustainable Solvents Group, Sustainable Solvents and its owner, Brian Smith, Solvent Services New Zealand and its directors, John Manus Pretorius and Aaron Baldwin.
Smith did not wish to make a comment when contacted.
The order gave the companies and individuals until Friday last week to comply with a number of requirements of the Resource Management Act but they failed to act.
If they did not comply, the court gave WDC the go-ahead to carry out remedial work and bill the owners.
WDC chief executive Rob Forlong said his council was finalising a tender to let a contract to a commercial operator to undertake the work.
"It is unfortunate, to say the least, that a business that knows the legal requirements it must work under fails to comply with these requirements and then fails to remedy the consequences of their actions, potentially leaving other innocent taxpayers and ratepayers to suffer the degradation of the environment, the physical risk and the clean-up costs," he said.
The gate leading to an enclosed yard in Ruakaka where hazardous substances are becoming an environmental risk. Photo / Michael Cunningham
In June 2008, WDC granted Sustainable Waste Management (SWM) resource consent to store up to 50,000 litres of solvents and chemicals in conjunction with the operation of a recycling plant.
That land was subdivided and the area to which the resource consent applied was transferred to Sustainable Solvents.
Separate consents that were granted by the Northland Regional Council to SWM for discharge to air were later transferred to Sustainable Solvents.
No consents have been granted in respect of discharges onto land or into water.
An investigation by NRC in late 2014 found part of the site was contaminated and WorkSafe New Zealand issued a compliance order that SSL bring no further hazardous substances onto the site.
In early January 2017, Sustainable Solvents Group, Sustainable Solvents, and Smith were convicted of discharging contaminants and ordered to pay a maximum of $214,146 to NRC from the sale of their property, and other enforcement orders were also made.
The sale of the property and business never occurred.
Sign pointing to the property where more than one million litres of dangerous chemcials are posing a risk to the environment.
Photo / Michael Cunningham
About four months later, NRC found hazardous substances stored on unsealed land, no secondary containment, and a pump indicating that untreated contaminated stormwater had been pumped onto land.
An abatement notice was issued but it was not complied with as a further inspection a month later found about one million litres of solvents and chemicals at the site, with waste still stored on unsealed ground.
Forlong said WDC and the Northland Regional Council had already taken measures to make the site as secure as possible such as funding a security fence around the facility and erecting signs warning members of the public about the presence of hazardous substances.
Last summer, he said, WDC arranged for fire mitigation works to be undertaken near the site and NRC and WDC paid for a security guard to monitor the site to ensure public safety.
WDC has also provided some assistance with the reduction and removal work by providing IBC containers for packaging contaminated water for removal.
These measures would remain in place until the site was safe, Forlong said.
