"We had been automatically issuing cleansing orders for properties the police graded as an A or B [in terms of suspected drugs issues]," Parkes said. "The Whatawhata Rd house had been given a lower D grading.
"However, the police never intended these gradings to be used as an assessment tool for environmental work."
Parkes said the council had since changed its procedures for handling properties confiscated in drug raids and they would be more thoroughly checked. Currently, decontamination was only carried out if police recommend it. Nationwide, more than 100 houses have been taken off criminals.
A spokesman for Waikato police said crime lab officers were "surprised" their findings had not been included on the property's LIM report.
The auction was stopped when forensic consultant Todd Sheppard announced he'd tested the house during an open home day and found traces of P. He said his findings had now been "vindicated". New tests are being done.
"I would like to see a separate government department set up to keep a public and easily accessible record of properties that have been used for making P," Sheppard said.
Miles Stratford, from the Auckland Regional Methamphetamine Working Group, reckoned there could be more than 20,000 properties in New Zealand tainted by P. He said the Waikato property highlighted the "systematic failure of the present system".
"This is a growing and serious issue. It makes sense for a purchase pack to be put together by the seller to prove a property is not contaminated by dangerous chemicals used in the making of drugs," Stratford said.
Tenant's friend had P lab
Landlady Kim Gouk has spent two years and $40,000 trying to get her investment property habitable again after a man was arrested for making P on the premises.
She says her three-bedroom bungalow at Te Hoe, near Huntly in the Waikato, is a shell after the friend of a former tenant was busted there.
"I remortgaged my own home to pay for all the testing and cleaning," Gouk says. "The rental house was so contaminated it had to be ripped apart."
Gouk has paid almost $40,000 for specialised decontamination work. On top of that, she has also lost about $25,000 in rent.
"New laws need to be introduced urgently to protect landlords and home buyers from drug dealers," Gouk says. "It took me ages to get the tenant out, even though his friend was charged with making P there. The tenant was then free to take his contaminated possessions to a new address with no comeback, while I was left with the mess and the big bills."
Gouk says she will have even more expenditure before the rural property will be fit to rent.
