Port bans explosive powder

Ports of Auckland refuse to store potentially explosive firearms powder. Photo / Dean Purcell

Ports of Auckland says it will not allow potentially explosive firearms powder to be stored on its wharves, despite a Government permit for that purpose.

Approval from the Environmental Risk Management Authority (Erma) for four containers, each holding up to 14 tonnes of the smokeless power, to be shipped through Auckland this year en route from Australia to California has upset Friends of the Earth and will be raised at a meeting tomorrow night of a port community reference forum.

But although the containers will be unloaded and reloaded on the Auckland waterfront, the port company said last night they would be transported immediately either to secure off-site storage in an unidentified quarry or to a barge anchored in Waitemata Harbour.

Port company chief risk officer Jim Harknett said that conditions such as storage time limits, which are not stipulated in the Erma permit, were not needed as the powder would not be kept at the port.

He said that although the port had secure locations for storing dangerous goods, a recently revised code of practice did not provide for these to be used to store explosives, "although they have the capability to do so".

A port spokeswoman was unable to say where shipments over the past 15 years had been kept.

The Erma permit requires the containers holding the powder - which Australian supplier Defence Logistics says is for American sports shooters rather than military use - to be removed from ships and towed by a diesel tractor-unit rather than a regular straddle carrier to a designated explosives holding area within the port.

No other wharf activities are to be carried out nearby while each container is on the move.

Friends of the Earth spokesman Bob Tait, a member of the port's community reference group, and residents' representatives who intend raising the issue at tomorrow's meeting, were not reassured by the port company's statement.

"I wouldn't like to see it being towed by the diesel tractor through the streets of Auckland with a sign 150mm high saying 'explosives'," Mr Tait said.

"It needs a man out in the front with a red flag for a start."