Land pollution laws 'need cleaning up'

House prices will suffer if the Government fails to introduce clear rules about who pays to clean up contaminated land, a lobby group claims.

The Sustainability Council calls for action in a report Financial Accountability for Hazardous Substances released today.

A cloud already hangs over the Auckland property market and thousands of homeowners are accusing Auckland councils of scaremongering over attempts to record information about soil contamination on nearly 5000 official property reports.

Studies have shown unacceptably high DDT, arsenic, lead and copper levels from sprays used when the land was used for horticulture.

However, Sustainability Council executive director Simon Terry said the issue was "just a microcosm of a wider national picture".

It says there could be more than 8000 contaminated sites nationwide.

The report called for a greatly expanded national fund to pay for the clean-up of historic contaminated sites, as well as a national register of sites and definitions of standards.

For future contamination, it wants developers and users of hazardous substances to be liable for economic losses to third parties and harm caused to human health that is not covered by ACC.

Mr Terry warned that land prices would be hit if the Government continued to let the issue drift.

"If action is not taken the markets begin to factor liability for these substances into property values.

"Property that potentially contains contaminated sites is now subject to uncertainty."

In 1995 the ministry proposed to make polluters retrospectively liable for clean-up costs, and property owners unaware of the contamination at purchase would have been exempt. It also wanted a fund totalling hundreds of millions of dollars to pay for clean-up.

But the National Government dropped the proposal and Labour has not done anything either, although the ministry had established a small fund to pay for clean-up and research on a few high-profile sites.

Mr Terry said that under the Resource Management Act the property owner was responsible for clean-up no matter who the polluter was.

A Ministry for the Environment spokeswoman said it had no comment to make as officials had not seen the report.