A long-lasting underground fire at a Waikato dump was arson, made worse by the sabotage of earthmoving equipment used to fight it, claims the dump's owner.
The Puke Coal Landfill Photo: Puke Coal Landfill
A multi-agency team led by the regional council has been formed to try to put out the fire burning near Pukemiro west of Huntly since August.
It was the third time a fire had been deliberately lit in the landfill when Puke Coal was in the process of applying for resource consents, company director John Campbell said.
His earthmoving equipment had been vandalised - two dump trucks recently had their tyres let down - slowing down the work to cap the fire with dirt.
"We are currently at the stage where almost all of the landfill has been covered in a layer of overburden and there is no smoke visible," Campbell said in an email to the multi-agency team, local councils and two government ministers being briefed on the fire. He also copied that email to RNZ.
The Waikato Regional Council said it did not know how the fire started.
Local activists had claimed that smoke was impacting their health but other residents told him it was minor and intermittent, Campbell said.
It bordered on "hysteria", he said.
The council rejected this.
"Certainly we've heard now from dozens of residents, telling us very comprehensively what the impacts have been on them," compliance manager Patrick Lynch said.
"Irritated eyes ... irritated respiratory responses ... nausea.
"They actually end up building up and people can end up getting quite a high degree of anxiety and stress and then they start having sleep deprivation."
Protecting people's health was the number one priority, which generated "real concerns about future fires" at the landfill, Lynch said.
Opposition to the landfill, and associated now-inoperative coalmine, over odour, dust, and leachate management dates back years.
Campbell said he had advised the police on the three occasions that a fire had started.
He disagreed with firefighters hosing the site in August, as this could spread the embers, and had since virtually covered the landfill in soil to suffocate the fire.
"The implication that FENZ are waiting at the gate to get on site to put out the fire is nonsense," he said.
The Waikato Regional Council last week directed Campbell to cap the fire with a half-metre of clay or dirt.
The council had not included him on the multi-agency team which illustrated its adversarial attitude, given he had the most experience of fighting landfill fires, Campbell said.
The council said it was talking to experts with experience in such fires.
In October it issued an abatement notice against a trucking company to stop dumping prohibited waste at the site.
Campbell said this was a waste of effort as none was being dumped.
The Waikato District Council has now confirmed it agreed to the landfill storing baled-up plastics until they could be removed.
The bales came from Auckland contractors who could not export them because of Covid, and very few had caught fire, Campbell said.
An investigation of the landfill included the plastics, the regional council said.
"Mr Campbell has now decided to provide some information that will form part of that investigation," the head of the multi-agency team Brent Sinclair said.