Clean up of Wellington beach toxic dump site cost nearly $1 million
Photo:
RNZ / Nick James
Cleaning up an old toxic dump site on a Wellington beach has cost nearly a million dollars.
In late 2021, a member of the public told local authorities they could see asbestos on a bank at Te Raekaihau Point, which sits between Lyall Bay and Princess Bay, an area popular for walkers, runners and cyclists.
The council did investigations of the site in July 2022 and August 2023 which found evidence of asbestos, oil, heavy metals, zinc, arsenic and lead.
They said it appeared the area was used for sand extraction in the 1930s, with it being back filled with waste likely in the 1950s or 60s.
Earlier this year RNZ reported that the council would
excavate, wrap and move to the material
to the southern landfill, due to the area being at risk of erosion and storm surges that could have led to it leaking.
Over three weeks in May that work was done, which also included the relocation of native lizards called Mokomoko and digging up 2,200 tonnes of waste.
Wellington City Council has confirmed to RNZ that the work costed nearly $1 million with half of it being paid for by the government through the $30 million
Contaminated Sites and Vulnerable Landfills Fund
announced in October.
A council marine and coastal project manager Joel De Boer told RNZ he was aware that there may be more sites like this around the city.
"A lot of them will already be covered, some of them may already be capped over and it may not be until you know a point in time when they become exposed that action will be taken."
De Boer said it was not a not cheap job to clean these dumpsites up so the council's job was about reacting to them when it could.
He said that from his conversations with the Ministry of Environment there were many sites like this across New Zealand.
A site validation report which would determine the final levels of any contaminants was being finished and would be peer reviewed over the next few weeks.
The council expected it to show the area was safe.
Throughout the Wellington region there are more than 100 closed landfill sites, many of which lay under popular parks and reserves.
When RNZ first reported on the South Coast site in January environment scientist Dr Jeff Seadon said it was not surprising.
"What we've got is something in the order of hundreds if not thousands of these sites around New Zealand. A lot of these sites are known by councils, but there are also a lot that are still unfound or undetected."
Seadon said during the 19th and 20th centuries, waste was often dumped because it was convenient and created some extra land. He said with larger storm surges and sea level rise, these dumps were being swept out and exposed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Otago Daily Times
3 hours ago
- Otago Daily Times
Dog photos lead to $400 fine
Signs clearly state no dogs are allowed in Tongariro National Park. Photo: DOC/Supplied via RNZ A woman who posted images of herself holding a dog in front of a "no dogs" sign in Tongariro National Park has been fined $400. Tongariro National Park has a no dog policy, including no dogs in vehicles. Department of Conservation Tongariro Operations Manager Libby O'Brien said the infringement notice was a "no-brainer". "This person didn't make a mistake, she showed blatant disregard for the law, for nature, for the mana of the dual World Heritage listed Tongariro National Park." Dogs are also not allowed at the three ski fields located in the park. Under the National Parks Act dogs are not allowed in any national park, with the exception of guide dogs and dogs engaged in duties for the purposes of law, search and rescue, or for approved management purposes. O'Brien said for this woman to "celebrate lawbreaking" was an to insult the iwi, the community, the businesses and local DOC rangers.
Newsroom
7 hours ago
- Newsroom
Book of the Week: Art sticks it to Ruth Richardson
Over four decades, commencing in the early 1960s and on a librarian's salary, Wellington-based autodidact Walter Cook amassed a world-class collection of late 19th and early 20th century ceramics and glass which he donated to the National Collection, soon to become Te Papa, in 1992. Cook's intention in gifting his collection of nearly 400 pieces to the nation was not without political intent. In a 2012 RNZ interview, he described the gift as 'the way I, an ordinary, powerless person, could give the fingers to Ruth Richardson and every value she stood for – that neo-liberal atomised self-interest. Because I don't believe in that at all, and our cultural institutions stand as evidence that there is community and there is common purpose'. His collection is documented across 400 pages of meticulously catalogued, referenced and illustrated applied arts, in Towards Modernism: The Walter Cook Collection at Te Papa by Justine Olsen. It's an elegant love letter to the joys one collector found, and chose to share, among the forms and colours found in Art Nouveau glass, Scandinavian teapots and biscuit jars by the irrepressible British designer Susie Cooper (1902–1995). Olsen, Te Papa Tongarewa's curator of Decorative Art and Design, explores the works of iconic designers in Cook's collection – Cooper and Clarice Cliff, William De Morgan, Keith Murray, Christopher Dresser and Royal Copenhagen stars Inge-Lise Koefoed and Berthe Jessen. Olsen deftly teases out wider contexts and readings for many of the decorative pieces. Among her favourites is 'a tall Tenera Vase by Danish designer Berthe Jessen in 1963 … It's a delicate yet lush design. The vase encapsulates the story of how Royal Copenhagen developed a fresh approach to design by hiring young women artists straight from art schools across Scandinavia. It has that art to industry approach'. Cook, born in 1941, was raised in a fertile theological and creative environment. His father, George, was an Anglican curate and his mother, Hinehauone Coralie Cameron, was a talented artist and printmaker. The Te Papa collection holds a number of her woodblock prints: they are reminiscent of those by leading mid-century figures such as A Lois White and Adele Younghusband. Young Walter's fascination with collections and museums was ignited as a four-year-old after a visit to the Wanganui Museum with his mother to see 'a cabinet of curiosities'. He 'returned home and started my own museum, and from then on, museums became places of pilgrimage – sites of an ultimate reality to which I could only aspire'. As a teenager he frequented Wellington's second-hand stores and bookshops, building his knowledge and developing an early love of English Art Nouveau artist Aubrey Beardsley and the philosophy of poet and designer William Morris, godfather of the English Arts and Crafts movement. Cook began collecting Art Nouveau as 'a way of touching the reality of Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites in far off New Zealand'. His first purchase in 1961 was a Tudric hot-water jug by Liberty & Co dating to around 1903 from the shop Gallery 36 on Vivian Street, Wellington. This, he said, 'initiated me into the addictive habit and thrill of hunting quarry in secondhand shops'. From this point Cook the collector worked his way through the 20th century as design trends became evermore progressive and future-facing, racing towards the modernism and the utopian optimism suggested by the book's title. From the Empire-infused fascinations with Japonisme and the classical forms of Royal Doulton and Moorcroft to the fusion of Medieval fancy and Art Nouveau of Tudric pewter and Minton 'Secessionist' ware, Cook looked to more flamboyant movements that flowered in the Art Deco years after WWI when Susie Cooper, Charlotte Rhead and Truda Carter, along with Clarice Cliff, were leading figures in the design world. New Zealand design enters the picture in the second half of Towards Modernism in the form of the creamy and minimalist forms of Crown Lynn vases by Ernest Shufflebotham, which continue to be highly sought after by 21st century collectors. Today much of this collecting has moved online, and that cagey, gregarious milieu of collectors and specialist dealers known as the trade is now defunct. Towards Modernism acts as their requiem, following the collector's quest among the shelves of tony antique dealers and bric-a-brac emporiums alike for a prize piece of Minton or an unusual example of Scandinavian design at Paddy's Market or a long-departed 'Curiosity' shop. Collector-centric shops, happy hunting grounds for Cook and his cohort, such as Odds & Ends, Mr Smiles and Willbank Court Antiques, from whom Cook acquired a fine high-fired Ruskin Pottery sang de boeuf (bull's blood) squat vase (1912) in 1985, emerge as vital arms of the transmission of information, enthusiasm, gossip and referrals. In 1972, Cook paid just $3 for the lovely Watcombe Pottery Palm pot with its distinctive shimmering green glaze from Marsden Antiques in Wellington, one of the few originals still trading, now in Featherston in the Wairarapa. Cook spotted another rare treasure in 1983 in a junk shop on Ponsonby Road. It was a Sea Urchin form double-spout jug by Christopher Dresser from the 1880s. Cook paid $18 for it; it is now valued at around $3000. In my experience as a collector, and in engaging with them as fellow travellers and clients over a decade as managing director of an auction house, these singular individuals are united by a desire to wring sense from the conveyor belt of the quotidian and divine. They are driven by the taxonomic urge: the need to comprehend and order the culture around them. The most dedicated and inspired, such as Cook, end up making good on those aspirations. Towards Modernism: The Walter Cook Collection at Te Papa by Justine Olsen (Te Papa Press, $75) is available in bookstores nationwide. The full review by Hamish Coney was published at the indispensable literary site edited by Paula Morris, New Zealand Review of Books.
RNZ News
16 hours ago
- RNZ News
Navy enlisted in Zealandia lake survey effort
The survey is like mowing a lawn, traversing back and forth mapping the lakebed below. Photo: Kate Green / RNZ The Navy has descended on a Wellington eco-sanctuary - but it's not to prevent an invasion, pests or otherwise. Rather it is conducting a survey of the Zealandia lake, good practice for the crew and useful information for the sanctuary. Zealandia chief financial officer John Diggins watched on while the Navy crew set up their black, inflatable Zodiac with surveying equipment on Wednesday morning. "It's really exciting," he said. "It actually shows us how the lake sits underneath, you can see the old creak that runs through, the original creak from before the dam was actually built, and just shows us any submerged logs. "There's also potentially a little goldmine down there, a little goldmine shaft that they saw on the last survey." The Navy crew sets up their surveying equipment aboard the Zodiac on Wednesday morning. Photo: Kate Green / RNZ That survey was done in 2018, and since then, technology had advanced and would hopefully give them a better look. The results would make it safer to navigate Zealandia's electric boat, Ara Kawau, around the man-made lake, Diggins said. "It's a really cool trip, and it's just really good to know if there are submerged logs that are hazards for the boat so we can just stay away from them." The Navy crew would be on deck for the next couple of days, and Diggins hoped they might get time to map the Upper Dam as well, which had never been surveyed before. Chief petty officer Julie O'Hara of HMNZS Matataua and the Navy's search, survey and recovery team. Photo: Kate Green / RNZ Chief Petty Officer Julie O'Hara of HMNZS Matataua and the Navy's search, survey and recovery team explained the portable multi-beam surveying system could see down to depths of 300 metres - but she was not expecting anything deeper than 15 metres. Three crew members set out across the lake in the Zodiac just after 10am. The boat would traverse back and forth across the lake, mapping the floor below. "It's kind of like mowing the lawns," O'Hara explained. The end product would come in the form of a map, with different colours representing different depths, which Zealandia could use to steer clear of shallows and obstacles - and it could be ready as soon as Friday. Zealandia's chief financial officer John Diggins watches on, as the Navy crew sets up the boat for the lake survey. Photo: Kate Green / RNZ As well as being useful for Zealandia, O'Hara said it was good training. "We had a bit of an operational pause at the start of the year from the Manawanui sinking [in October 2024], so we came together as a trade and looked at how we can improve." "A lot of training, getting back into it, and then doing this training exercise here to really consolidate it." Zealandia's electric boat, Ara Kawau. Photo: Kate Green / RNZ The team carried out a huge variety of work - uncovering landmines, recovering vehicles, searching for missing people and surveying sea floors. "We never know where we're going to deploy in the world, and what's asked of us, so by doing different lakes it really gives us the training that we need to move from normally working salt water, to working in fresh water." Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
