Letter: Toxic waste removal a bigger issue than park toilets

Contributed

V O'Brien

What a great article in Wednesday's Beacon by Steve Chapman regarding the proposed boat harbour.

Reading and listening to local community issues, it seems that we are more concerned with the lack of toilets and a few puddles at the weekly market at Mitchell Park.

Do 1000 people attend each week?

Do they all need to use a toilet?

Can we afford the toilets? No

Will people still attend the market if the toilets are not built? Of course they will.

Of more importance to everyone here in Whakatāne and surrounds is the proposed boat harbour .

The current Government asked everyone in New Zealand for projects that require fast tracked resource consents to apply. Over 300 applications were made and after consideration, the Government reduced the number for approval to 149. One of the projects approved was the fast tracking of a resource consent to take the toxic waste from the proposed Whakatāne boat harbour to an approved industrial waste area .

My understanding is the area being considered is near Hampton Downs - 250 kilometres from Whakatāne. Considering the toxic waste will be wet, it will reduce the volume trucks can carry, plus these trucks will be required to be leak proof.

Costs? It's hard to even put a number on it.

I grew up in a time when sawmills used toxic chemicals to treat every piece of timber that went through.

Each piece went through a bath and was fully immersed before being manually handled off the sort line. The chemical residue was everywhere.

We learnt how contaminated areas were when Bay of Plenty Regional Council cleaned up the drains round the Whakatāne Board Mill site and the costs associated with it.

No one talks much today about the health issues these chemicals caused.

So now we want to go and dig all this bloody toxic waste up again with little or no regards to sins of the past.

How does anyone know this contaminated waste won't end up in the river and poison everything downstream?

"Don't poke the bear "

Do we need the harbour ? No

Can we afford it ? No

Does anyone really want it?

Even our Mayor , regional council chairman and our local representative have there doubts .

Time for us all to send a clear message to the council to stop this madness.

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