‘Let’s not revert back to the days of the 52 dumps’

In the mid 1990s, Canterbury’s councils came together, with two private firms, to solve a rubbish problem.
Dumps had been peppered over the landscape and some were running out of space. The advent of the Resource Management Act forced the closure of many of them; often just holes in the ground, in former quarries and shingle pits.
The late Gareth James, a manager at Waimakariri District Council, north of Christchurch, realised the councils, particularly the smaller ones, couldn’t afford to go it alone. He became a driving force for the Kate Valley landfill, which opened in 2005, and sits on a 200m-deep layer of siltstone at Waipara, about an hour’s drive north of the city.
The joint venture that owns and operates the landfill is Transwaste Canterbury, whose chair is Gill Cox – a board member since 1999. He tells Newsroom material deposited at Kate Valley reached six million tonnes a few weeks ago out of a capacity of 12.5 million tonnes. “We’re about halfway.”
Yet there’s been a recent spike in applications for new landfills in Canterbury. “We find that interesting,” Cox says.
Submissions closed last week for a proposal by Protranz International to open a “class 3” managed fill at Whiterock’s quarry and limeworks, in the Waimakariri district – with a capacity of 1.1 million tonnes, operating for about 20 years.
In June, Woodstock Quarries was declined consent to operate a landfill – dubbed a “hybrid class 1 and class 2 landfill” by independent commissioners – at an existing quarry, near Oxford, Waimakariri.
Meanwhile, down in South Canterbury, Canterbury Environmental Solutions was granted consent, without public notification, for another hybrid, class 1/2 landfill, near Cave, late last year.
Cox says Transwaste isn’t opposed to other landfills, but they must meet the best environmental standards. The company made a submission on the Protranz application, he says, to ensure the regulator, Canterbury’s regional council (ECan), monitors those standards. “We need assurance around that.”
His concern is Canterbury fought hard 30 years ago to get well-managed waste, “and we’ve got it”. “Let’s not revert back to what I call the days of the 52 dumps.”
That prospect, Cox says, would be a disaster.
Newly created incorporated society White Rock Community opposes Protranz’s landfill, and now has more than 200 members. The society’s chairperson, Mike McCaleb, says concerns are centred on the landfill’s proximity to groundwater.
“It seems a wholly, poorly conceived concept,” Tennessee-born McCaleb says. “They have chosen the most profitable contaminated products that they can get the most money out of.”
The society’s submission says Protranz’s applications aren’t sufficiently robust for what is a highly sensitive environment. “The magnitude of effects are downplayed or inadequately assessed (including environmental risks to the local ecosystems, water quality and human health) and the quantum of positive effects (including those on the community, landscape, and terrestrial ecology) are overstated, with distinct lack of evidence to support opinions reached.”
Protranz director Gerard Daldry says his company spent years carting material to Kate Valley after the earthquakes, material he thought didn’t need to go to a class 1 landfill, “and people were paying through the nose”.
If it gets consent, the majority of the landfill’s clients will be small, excavating companies, he says, that dig out sections for new houses. Daldry says the company’s already spent millions of dollars on its application. It asked for its consent to be publicly notified, and hired some of the best environmental engineers and teams.
“We’re not going to get rich out of this. This isn’t a big money-making exercise, but it’s going to save a lot of people a lot of money on the way through.”
An ecological assessment for Protranz, by consultancy WSP, says the landfill may have ongoing impacts to some features, such as a wetland.
“The proposed landfill liner exceeds that required for a class 3 managed landfill, and groundwater will be continually monitored with a trigger action response plan put in place. These engineering and administrative controls significantly reduces the potential for leachate to entering groundwater in a material way which has potential to enter the Karetu River.”
Different classes of landfill determine what type of waste can be taken.
Class 1 can handle pretty much all waste, including domestic waste from houses, but not material that’s extremely hazardous. Meanwhile, class 2 is for construction and demolition fill, while classes 3 and 4 are managed or controlled facilities for soils, or other inert materials, like rubble, that might be contaminated but not hazardous.
Cox, of Transwaste, says Kate Valley has strict environmental standards for water, wastewater, leachate and gas. He says the landfill is an anaerobic digester – in which bacteria breaks down organic matter in the absence of oxygen – producing leachate and gas.
Leachate, which “is the nasty”, Cox says, is captured by a liner and reapplied to the waste pile, or taken to Christchurch’s sewage treatment plant. Meanwhile, landfill gas – methane, primarily – is funnelled into pipes and used to generate about three megawatts of electricity (enough to power about 3000 homes) for the national grid. Or it’s flared, producing carbon dioxide.
When it comes to other landfills, Cox worries about “creep”. If a lower-class landfill is lined like a class 1 system, might it accept higher-level material? Should it have a gas extraction system? Might companies dumping waste try to avoid paying a higher charge by using a lower-class facility?
There’s a financial incentive to develop a lower-class landfill, without costly gas extraction and liner protections. The higher the class of landfill, the more waste disposal levy is paid to the Government – $60 for class 1, $30 for class 2 and $10 for classes 3 and 4.
(Prices just increased in July, and are scheduled to rise every year until 2027. Transwaste thought the disposal levy should be flat across all landfill classes, otherwise it might incentivise what Cox calls “diversion”.)
Kate Valley’s “gate rate” is about $185 a tonne. At Whiterock, Protranz’s Daldry says the per-tonne charge is expected to be about half that.
As for the idea of “creep” at Whiterock, Daldry says it won’t take material it shouldn’t. Having a class 3 landfill with a class 1 liner is “like having a vasectomy and wearing a condom”. “Why the hell would you? But it just makes everything a bit safer.”
ECan’s general manager of regulatory implementation Paul Hulse says landfill applications are assessed on their merits. “Part of the application-auditing process is consideration on how best to manage any potential environmental or cultural effects.”
Landfills are monitored closely, Hulse says – “from regularly checking information that consent holders are required to report as part of their consent conditions to conducting site visits and meeting the consent holders”. 
Asked why Canterbury Environmental Solutions’ consent wasn’t publicly notified, Hulse says it didn’t meet the criteria. Neighbouring landowners and stakeholders approved of the project. “The proposal was comprehensive, with a significant mitigations package proposed to address any environmental effects.”
Ministry for the Environment’s general manager of waste and hazardous substances and new organisms policy Glenn Wigley, says disposal levies are only one consideration for companies opening a new landfill site – “alongside other factors such as regulatory requirements (such as consenting requirements) and market demand”.
Prior to 2021, only municipal landfills were subject to the disposal levy. “To date, we haven’t seen substantial increases in other landfill types, but this is something we continue to monitor.”
Investing in a nationwide network of construction and demolition waste facilities has been a recent priority for the Waste Minimisation Fund, Wigley says.
Back at Kate Valley, the landfill will be operating for years to come – and potentially decades.
Transwaste has a consent to operate until 2039. Cox points out the existing landfill’s footprint is 37 hectares, out of about 1300ha.
“We’ve got a valley right next to where the landfill valley is that would have another 50 to 60 years, at least, of space at current volumes. And then there’s another valley that’s probably got another 100 years.”