The chair of the board of inquiry into plans to build a waste to energy plant in Te Awamutu asked the applicant why they had not addressed social effects.
Protestors at Don’t Burn Waipa
Environment Court Judge Brian Dwyer asked applicant Global Contracting Solutions counsel Bronwyn Carruthers about the omission as the three-week hearing got underway at Waikato Stadium in Hamilton last week.
“You haven’t addressed anywhere in your comments on effects, the matter of social effects which will form quite a bit of the case for a couple of the parties,” Judge Dwyer said. “Is there a reason for that?”
“I am always reluctant to address in submissions a point to be made through cross-examination of a witness in advance, would be the short answer to that, sir,” Carruthers replied.
“Well, I’m quite interested in this aspect. It seems to me looking at it with a degree of simplicity that if the board was convinced to view that the effects of the discharges were no more than minor, then it can’t be the case that we turn an application down,” he said.
Carruthers agreed.
An artist’s impression of the proposed plant.
“Mis-founded, or unfounded feelings about a project don’t provide a basis for declining it, is where you’re coming from,” he said.
The proposal has attracted more than 1000 submissions with the vast majority opposed, including objections from mana whenua, DairyNZ, Fonterra, Te Awamutu-Kihikihi Community Board and Waipā District Council.
About 64 per cent of submissions expressed concerns about pollutants, including dioxins and nanoparticles, and there were concerns about the lack of a health impact assessment.
Nicholas Manukau and Myles McCauley are sitting alongside Judge Dwyer on the panel.
Craig Tuhoro
Global Contracting Solutions director and principal shareholder Craig Tuhoro told the board he had two reasons for making the application.
“One was I don’t like the current toolbox with regards to treatment of waste, and I wanted to create product with that waste, so that product would be energy,” he said.
Environmental Defence Society and Zero Waste Network counsel Dhilum Nightingale had Tuhoro read an excerpt from a 2023 Te Awamutu News article in which he was quoted as saying GMS sends approximately 18,000 tonne of floc, a waste product produced by the scrap metal recycling process, to landfill each year.
“That’s too much,” he said in the article. “So, I began searching for a solution. That’s how I came across thermal waste conversion, a successfully used process across Europe.”
Tuhoro told the hearing: “I’m confident that we can get enough material to run this plant. We’re not saying that all material shouldn’t go into landfill. We’re saying that the waste system itself, that this is an important upgrade for the toolkit and we think that this is where the material needs to go.”
Tuhoro said Racecourse Road was one of two Te Awamutu sites his company had considered for the plant.
“The council introduced us to the site, said it was an industrial zone and would be appropriate for us to develop,” Tuhoro said.
“We made it clear to the people that we were working with we needed to find an industrially zoned site or certain sites. We can’t go putting a facility like this on residential property. We can’t put a facility like this on a farm. This is industrially zoned property. It was for sale. The council took us to the site, so we assumed that the council was considering the community when they took us there.”
Don’t Burn Waipā spokesman Eoin Fitzpatrick said the pressure group was surprised that the hearing is not being held in Te Awamutu.
“I think that they could have found something. I guess they’d taken the easy option for them for a number of factors, but it does make it a little bit inaccessible. We did get a small win in that they are now streaming via zoom – a request we made at one of the initial meetings.
The hearing is expected to end on July 4.
Don’t burn Waipa
