Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Not Our Mess..

Not our mess.

It is great to see local National MP Jonathan Young and Nick Smith get stuck in to the debate on Marfell Park chemical clean-up. And for their Governments pleadge to give financial support to assist with the clean-up and ensure that the Marfell dioxin contaminated ex-dump and playground be made safe. But to suggest that ratepayers should help pay towards the clean-up is just ridiculous. Lets not forget that the government were heavily involved in subsidising Dow in the early days to manufacture the chemicals in the first place. So the governments offer of $25.000 and Dow's offer now Dow Agrosciences of $50.000 is just farcical. Dow knew the dangers of their chemicals to humans. Yet still manufactured dioxin based chemicals at their Paritutu New Plymouth plant with NZ Government knowledge for another 10 years after the US Government had stopped its use and manufacturing of it in the USA, because of its known health effects on humans. Dow New Plymouth continued to dump its chemical waste by-products into our municipal dumps landfills and out to sea through our sewers and our waste water systems. So its fair to say the community and the ratepayers of New Plymouth have for decades already paid dearly for this environmental mess many times over with their health and in council repair costs on its chemically damaged sewer and waste water pipes. And are still today paying for the consequences of being exsposed. The New Plymouth community are the victims not the perpetrators. To suggest the community pay more through their rates is a total insult to our community. Who first paid with their taxes in government subsidies to Dow to posion them, and are now asked to pay to clean it up through their rates. At the very least the Nerw Plymouth community deserves a Ministerial government apology, and Dow Agrosciences needs to take ownership of its community responsability and in partnership with the government fully compensate the community for the damage and costs accured from its past chemical manufacturing and known past and present chemical exsposures.

Rusty Kane
New Plymouth
New Zealand

Ratepayers landed with clean-up bill

Ratepayers landed with clean-up bill Taranaki Daily News 15/07/2009


New Plymouth district ratepayers will be left with the bulk of the bill for the Marfell Park chemical clean-up despite a Government payout.
Environment Minister Nick Smith said yesterday nearly $25,000 would be made available from the Contaminated Sites Remediation Fund for further testing at the site.
The investigation comes after drums containing dioxin were uncovered at the park in May by stormwater workers, sparking concern from nearby residents.
Dioxin was a by-product of chemicals manufactured by the Ivon Watkins-Dow company from the early 1960s until 1987. Dow AgroSciences last month donated $50,000 to the New Plymouth District Council for the clean-up.
However, the Taranaki Daily News understand the total bill for the clean-up, to be paid by the district council as landowner of the park, will be closer to $180,000.
Dr Smith yesterday visited the park with New Plymouth MP Jonathan Young and Taranaki Regional Council representatives.
He said that the Government was paying for the cost of the consultants to design the testing programme that began on Monday.
"We are recognising that Taranaki does have a particular problem in this area, but at this stage the level of funding that's required is not out of order for what the regional council and New Plymouth District Council can be expected to contribute," Dr Smith said.
"Marfell Park came out of left field, it was a bit of a nasty surprise ... but the community need a reassurance that this site and this playground area is safe."
That assurance should be provided with the result of the tests due out by the end of August, Dr Smith said.
The Marfell incident had shown up a weakness in Government policy over who should foot the bill for contaminated sites, the minister said.
"The problem here is that it seems Dow or its predecessor acted quite lawfully in that there was no restrictions on what could be dumped in the old landfill."
It was difficult to ping companies who acted lawfully, Dr Smith said, however the Government was looking into the issue.
Dr Smith did not think there was grounds to investigate other former dumps in the area unless new information of concern came to light.
"I don't think there is much more that the city and regional council can do beyond keeping a watching brief ... at the moment it's a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack."