Stratford mayor Neil Volzke says the council will upgrade the fencing at the Stratford oxidation ponds.
Stratford mayor Neil Volzke says the council will upgrade the fencing at the Stratford oxidation ponds.
OPINION:
Health and Safety is a topic never far from the minds of all people associated with councils.
Keeping people safe is a key factor in decision-making and the associated costs when something goes wrong can be very significant.
Quite rightly, councils are inherently risk-averse organisations for a reason and recently we received two very stark reminders of why we need to be.
Recently, the Gore District Council was charged with breaches of Health and Safety laws following the tragic death of a youngster who fell into a council-owned and operated oxidation pond.
A guilty plea resulted in the council being ordered to pay $110,000 to the child’s parents and WorkSafe’s prosecution costs of $18,000, but the council was not fined in this case. The council avoided a fine because the judge did not want to burden the district’s ratepayers with any more debt.
The follow-on from this tragedy is that all councils have been put on notice that facilities like oxidation ponds, that present potential danger to the public at large, must be secured.
Coincidentally, the Gore ponds look very similar to the ponds in Stratford, which only have low-level stock fencing around the perimeter, which is hardly enough to keep a child out.
A proposal to upgrade the fencing at the Stratford ponds to security-type fencing was debated by elected members last month and was authorised to proceed. The estimated cost of $175,000 was hard to accept given that in the 80 years that our ponds have been there, no major incidents have occurred.
Stratford mayor Neil Volzke says health and safety is a key factor in decision-making.
That may just be good luck, however, it does not excuse the council from fulfilling its legal obligations to keep people safe. What monetary value do you put on a human life?
The Stratford ponds are some distance from residential areas of the town in a rural area, which raises another interesting issue to ponder. If I was asked to list the ponds, lakes and waterways in the Stratford District in the order of risk to the public, the oxidation ponds wouldn’t feature in the top three.
In my opinion, the lake at Victoria Park which is near a children’s playground, the pond at the Rhododendron Dell which is near a school and the open waterway of the Patea River through the centre of the town would all pose more risk than the more remotely located oxidation ponds. All three are unfenced.
The difference between these three and the oxidation ponds is that they are considered to be natural waterways in comparison to the oxidation ponds which are man-made.
The irony is, that should a child fall into the natural waterway and a tragic drowning occurs, and despite the potential for the same outcome by falling into an oxidation pond, fencing these natural waterways is not required. It seems hard to fathom that the rules are so different for each, given that the associated risks are similar.
The other recent Health and Safety reminder came from a case involving the Thames-Coromandel District Council.
The council authorised a company to operate a giant inflatable slide at the Whangamatā Summer Festival in December 2020. A dozen people, most of whom were children, fell from heights of up to 12 metres. An adult on the slide broke both his ankles and has required 11 surgeries since.
The slide operator was fined $350,000 and ordered to pay reparations of over $40,000 over the incident. In addition, the council has now been ordered to pay reparation to the injured adult for its failure to manage a shared risk.
According to WorkSafe, over and above the operator’s obvious failures, the council plainly failed to do its due diligence on an operator with a poor safety record, by failing to make appropriate checks and then issuing a permit.
WorkSafe went on to say that businesses and organisations that consent and permit events and equipment cannot absolve themselves of responsibility for health and safety when things go wrong.
There is a clear message and learning from these two incidents. Councils will be held accountable and must meet their obligations under the Health and Safety legislation.