The dirty dirt saga

It's unlikely Sally Gaw knew what she was starting when she began gathering soil samples from the greater Auckland region three years ago.

Two years after she sent her findings to the Ministry for the Environment, the Waikato PhD researcher's work has turned into front-page news.

A cloud is hanging over the Auckland property market and thousands of home owners are accusing the Auckland councils of "scaremongering" over attempts to record information about potential soil contamination on nearly 5000 property reports.

The council in turn is struggling to deal with the angry reaction and is looking to the Government for guidance, while the Government is faced with working through what has become a national issue.

When the ministry received Gaw's report in February 2002, the findings of higher-than-acceptable levels of DDT, arsenic, lead, copper and dieldrin did not come as a complete surprise.

"The ministry had been working on particularly the higher-profile contaminated sites for years," said Sue Powell, the ministry's "working with local government" general manager.

"It's always been a major part of our work programme, dealing with some of the more difficult ones like the timber treatment plants and Mapua [the former fruitgrowers chemical company site west of Nelson].

"We were aware that there were some issues [with horticultural sites] out there but until the [Gaw] study we really didn't have a feel for the extent and nature of it."

After receiving the report, the ministry forwarded it to councils around the country.

There was a set of draft guidelines for councils on managing contaminated land but it is now obvious they were not specific enough.

Different councils took different approaches.

In Hamilton the city and regional council worked together, identifying 223 potentially affected properties. They contacted residents, and tested nearly 100 sites, 43 of which revealed elevated levels of contaminants.

After offering remediation, the council then recorded information on the Land Information Memorandum (LIM) reports of the affected properties.

In Auckland, however, councils took a very different approach.

After receiving the Gaw report, Auckland and Waitakere councils started their own studies.

They also consulted lawyers who advised that the councils had a responsibility to disclose information about potential soil contamination on property reports, even before there was proof of contamination.

When chief executives gathered at a regional forum in September they decided to follow the legal advice and record information about the potential soil contamination on LIM reports.

Unlike Hamilton, they decided to record that information without notifying the affected residents and without testing for proof of contamination.

The councils will not say why they took that approach but what may have played a role was the fact that Auckland's problems were likely to be on a large scale and testing would have run into millions of dollars.

While Waitakere City Council, which had already identified 3000 potentially affected properties, set about tagging its reports, Auckland City Council completed its own desktop study.

Using old aerial photographs the council identified 230 former horticultural sites, most of which were market gardens, orchards or vineyards around Avondale, Glen Innes and Panmure.

By overlaying present-day maps on the photos the council then identified 4872 properties which it believes are sitting on old horticultural sites.

Last month, as the council was about to start recording information on those properties' LIM reports, the Herald discovered what was happening.

The council then decided to publicly disclose its findings.

At this point the storm broke. A student's research project had gone from spreading ripples to becoming an emotion-laden national issue.

Auckland residents responded with a mixture of fear and anger.

There were concerns about children playing in the backyard, and about the safety of eating homegrown fruit and vegetables.

There were reports of a woman whose fingers bled every time she went out into the garden.

But, those initial fears were quickly joined by with a more characteristically Auckland concern.

The LIM report tags state: "There is no evidence this property is, or is not, contaminated as a result of any former horticultural use."

At public meetings hundreds of property owners called for the council to stop such tagging until there was proof of soil contamination. They were worried their property would be devalued - a concern which has already come to fruition in some areas.

Meadowbank couple Annette and John Woodyear-Smith felt they had no choice but to pay for a soil test after receiving a council letter about potential contamination.

"Our property is on the market. We have a legal obligation to disclose any problems we know about," said Mrs Woodyear-Smith. "We had no choice but to get our soil tested, a cost of $2500."

The Woodyear-Smiths were lucky. Their soil was fine. Others who have refused to have a test have found their contracts falling through.

This week, a month after it all began, the council has finally backed down and said it will stop tagging the reports until it gets further advice from the Crown Law Office.

In the meantime the main players are left in limbo.

Auckland residents are waiting for a soil-testing programme, wondering if their property values will be permanently affected by the "dirty dirt" stigma.

The council, after a series of embarrassing turn arounds, is waiting to hear whether it will open itself up to future prosecution if it does not tag property reports with information about potential contamination now.

And the ministry is not only trying to clarify its guidelines on handling contamination but working overtime to try to establish some national testing standards.

In her research, Gaw used a combination of international guidelines to test for the chemicals in old pesticides because there were no national standards in New Zealand. The ministry is working alongside Australia to develop a national set of guidelines, but they will not be available for at least 18 months.

In the meantime regional councils will have to follow Gaw's lead and use best-practice guidelines from overseas, where the issue of soil contamination has been researched since the early 1990s.

The Ministry for the Environment's Sue Powell said she hoped other councils would seek more advice before tackling the contamination issue.

"We would hope that where issues of this magnitude might arise that councils might come and talk to us and other councils about what's worked and what hasn't worked elsewhere.

"We have definitely learnt some things. One of the key things is we have got a draft set of guidelines out there for consultation with local government at the moment. One of the key things will be how do we make those guidelines work a little bit better for district councils."

The ministry has also put processes in place to ensure new subdivisions are built on non-contaminated land.

Environment minister Marian Hobbs has said she will, if necessary, seek a law change to clarify the LIM report issue.

Auckland Regional Council land and water quality manager Eddie Grogan says the way forward lies in an effective testing programme so Auckland properties can be eliminated from the list of potentially contaminated sites - one by one.

"You have got to feel for those people who bought the properties thinking that they were fine and that they had no issues or risk," he said. "I guess at some stage the cycle [of blame] has got to stop.

"At some stage somebody has to check and see whether those sites are okay, and who actually does that is a very expensive question."

An even more expensive question might be: who foots the bill for remedial work if a site is, indeed, found to be contaminated? Horticulturalists used sprays because the Government instructed them to do so.

It might be argued that the Government should pay to clear up the mess.