A lawyer for Waikato Thoroughbred Racing says a “she’ll be right” attitude has been taken by the company planning a waste to energy plant for Te Awamutu has taken.
An artist’s impression of Paewira. Photo: Supplied
The Racecourse Road plant, to be called Paewira, would burn tonnes of rubbish trucked in from throughout the Waikato and generate electricity.
But its site – near the Mangapiko Stream, a Fonterra plant, the Waipā Racing Club track and both Te Awamutu College and Te Wananga o Aotearoa – prompted protests when it was announced.
At an indendent Board of Inquiry hearing in Hamilton into the planned plant last week, counsel Marianne Mackintosh asked Environmental Risk Sciences director Dr Jackie Wright what the health consequences would be if something went wrong with the proposed Racecourse Road plant.
“I haven’t assessed that,” Wright said. “It’s a hypothetical, and I don’t have enough information, sorry.”
“So, it’s a sort of ‘she’ll be right’ and wait and see if anything bad happens,” Mackintosh said.
Wright who was called to give evidence by applicant Global Contracting Solutions, disagreed.
“I haven’t assessed it because I haven’t been given that information,” she said.
“So is it your evidence that you can say with certainty that there will be zero premature deaths as a result of this plant being located next to a residential population?” Mackintosh asked.
Wright responded she could not say that.
“I don’ know how you would measure zero.
“There is a small risk of increased premature deaths. Now, whether you call it premature deaths or probably the more useful health measure, to actually calculate is the years of life lost, which talks about how many days of a person’s life a particular exposure may result in… that’s actually a much more useful measure than just saying a premature death,” Wright said.
“So, if you’re going down that line and you had some certainty, that’s what you would calculate. But there is always going to be a risk with exposure to changes in PM2.5 [particulate matter] and NO2 [nitrogen dioxide]. And that’s just part of those calculations. And the aim is to reduce that to as low as possible.”
Environment Defence Society and Zero Waste counsel Sarah Ongley asked Global Contracting Solution’s air quality consultant Dr Terry Brady whether dioxin spikes could occur without being measured.
“I’m just stating a hypothetical, if something went wrong with the plant,” Ongley said. “You are saying it won’t. But I’m saying if it does, a dioxin emission could occur that won’t be measured?”
“In theory, that is the case, yes,” Brady said.
Sampling takes an hour, and it takes a week or two to get the results back from Melbourne, Australia.
Under cross examination from Fonterra’s counsel Daniel Minhinnick, Brady said when Fonterra’s own boiler start-up “you’ll get spikes of dioxin from that plant as well”.
“My expectation is that the risk from that potential odour source is actually far less than the existing aerobic and anaerobic ponds at a similar distance from Fonterra’s own wastewater treatment system,” he added.
“That in my opinion would be a much greater odour rather than the proposed plant.”
The applicant is considering almost doubling the length of the plant’s chimneys from 38 metres to 60 metres
“The 38-metre stack is adequate,” Brady said.
“It does the job, meets the appropriate Ambient Air Quality Guidelines and Standards. Quite clearly, a 60-metre stack would do better. Of that, there is no doubt.”
The waste to energy plant proposal has attracted more than 1300 submissions, the vast majority opposed.
They include 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.
The hearing is expected to end tomorrow.
