Composting plant is toxic wasteland, neighbours tell court

Neighbours of an industrial waste plant in Taranaki say a promised composting operation has instead become a toxic dump that made them sick.

For more than 20 years waste including oil and gas drilling mud and poultry farm waste have been trucked to Remediation New Zealand’s composting and worm farming site northeast of New Plymouth.

The Environment Court is considering the future of the operation as the company appeals against Taranaki Regional Council’s refusal to renew its resource consents at rural Urutī.

A 20,000-tonne stockpile has built up, contaminated with arsenic, hydrocarbons, chemical additives, and unauthorised treated-timber sawdust.

One of the nearest neighbours Dawn Bendall told the court the site was unsuitable for waste disposal due to shape of the land and heavy rainfall, with cold air drainage from surrounding hills spreading putrid smells.

“This operation commenced as a vermicast and composting facility and turned into a toxic wasteland.”

Sue Radcliffe said the smell sometimes reached her house almost three kilometres away. “It turned out to be anything but an environmentally friendly worm farm, and in fact it’s just an expensive dump for toxic waste.”

The residents said offensive odours from Remediation NZ have made them sick, particularly with respiratory and skin problems.

Bendall said she made 32 odour complaints to TRC in the past six months.

She described recent odour events: “It was offensive and objectional chemical smell, burning nose, eyes and throat at 6am throughout the valley, at our home … the air was heavy and hard to breathe with skin tingling.”

Bendall says her husband’s specialist doctor has diagnosed a Reactive Airways Dysfunction Syndrome due to inhaled irritants from the waste site.

“My husband Glen continues to have asthma attacks whenever there is continual odour.”

And residents fear the contamination might be the source of more serious illnesses.

Radcliffe said she especially worried about families closest to the waste site, with Dawn Bendall already having had cancer.

“This year Johnny (Oxenham) is now suffering throat cancer and Dawn’s father who did live in that area died [of cancer] 4 years ago.”

Oxenham said locals had been denied fresh air for 23 years since Remediation NZ arrived in Urutī.

“Whether that’s caused my illness or not I can’t say.”

Remediation NZ’S lawyer Deanne Brabant argued that people had become over sensitised to odour, and health effects were also due to other recognised factors including health status, coping mechanisms, and their economic relation to the source of contamination.

“There’s been medical experts in this case who actually made some conclusions and … they said that [there had been] no toxic effects.”

In a written joint witness statement, the medical officer of health Dr Jonathan Jarman and the company’s expert Dr David Black had previously agreed that poisoning by airborne contaminants was unlikely.

But both doctors also agreed that below the level of poisoning Urutī residents could still suffer symptoms from the odour, especially if sensitised by repeated exposure.

Dr Jarman had found that when “people have been subject to odour and made lots of odour complaints they can become sensitised … and the slightest bit of odour will trigger them.”

Symptoms at times matching odour discharges with biologically plausible effects which can’t be explained by alternative causes “all make a diagnosis of odour related health effects more likely.”

Dr Jarman also wrote that air quality specialist Lou Wickham found Remediation NZ was likely emitting hydrogen sulphides and other sulphides including methyl mercaptan, ammonia and amines and volatile organic compounds.

He and Wickham agreed that “the discharges to air from Remediation NZ are likely to be causing significant adverse health effects on neighbouring residents.”

Radcliffe said the company “really has had no respect for our community.”

“The community would like the site closed down cleaned up and exited, so our community can get on – with the people, the land and the awa not polluted.”

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“It turned out to be anything but an environmentally friendly worm farm, and in fact it’s just an expensive dump for toxic waste.”

Sue Radcliffe