Fletcher’s/Winstone Aggregates History of Denial

The thing about Environment Court hearings is there’s lots of time to chat. You gather before a hearing day, morning tea, lunchtime. And you get the gossip. It has been an opportunity for me hear Dick Bellamy’s side of the Three Kings Quarry story – which goes back a long way. Over thirty years.

The first story he told me about was dust. When the quarry was fairly shallow, he says he could regularly see from his house a D9 bulldozer sitting on top of a pile of scoria. Not sure what it was doing there. And then scoria would be tipped into a stone crusher and plumes of scoria dust would blow into the air, and with a reasonable wind, it would blow over houses in the neighbourhood. So that was a big issue for the locals. Dr Bellamy tried to do something about it. Winstone’s denied that the dust coating the good painted weatherboard homes of Mt Eden was from its operation.

So Dr bellamy carefull took samples of the dust from the houses, and – presumably late at night – scampered down to the quarry and scraped some scoria dust off the stone crusher – and took the samples into his mates at Auckland University. They tested both samples and confirmed they were from the same source.

And when confronted with this evidence, Winstone’s claimed that because the roads on the vicinity had been re-surfaced (good old chip seal I guess) with scoria from its quarry (it claimed), then the motorists using the roads had caused the dust.

Man oh man.

Then, Dr Bellamy explained, came the de-watering. Residents had hoped that when the quarry got down to the water table, quarrying would stop. But Winstone’s applied to de-water the quarry so it could dig deeper. It wanted to dig down much further and get out more scoria. By now residents had succeeded in preventing Winstones from mining basalt – very hard and tough – needed explosives, caused vibration and ground shaking. Dr Bellamy was among the residents who took Winstone’s to task over this. They were concerned about the effects of subsidence. When land is de-watered, certain geologies will shrink, causing subsidence. He explained to me this was because there are old river valleys underneath Auckland’s recent volcanic rocks. These are sedimentary and prone to shrink when de-watered. However it appears that Winstone’s again denied such things would happen. Would never happen.

But there has been subsidence Dr Bellamy confirmed. Not a lot, but it has occurred, in contradiction to Winstone’s firm view. Presumably supported by it experts.

So now we have another denial. This denial is that the contaminants from permitted contaminated fill, will not get into the groundwaters, and will not get into Auckland’s aquifers.

Man oh man.

Garbage In = Garbage Out

There was a delightful moment in the Environment Court on Tuesday 8th March.

Dr Bellamy, who is representing the submissions of the South Epsom Planning Group, got the opportunity to cross examine one of Winstone's key expert witnesses. This was Mr Chote, who has been a senior General Manager for Winstones for several years. His evidence had been "taken as read" by Judge Smith and the two commissioners sitting with him, and all parties respresented then had the opportunity of asking Mr Chote questions about his evidence and the application.

This was day 2 of the hearing of Fletcher Construction's contested application. They want to use the Three Kings Quarry at Mt Eden as a "cleanfill" for around three million cubic metres of "fill" which they hope is permitted to contain contaminants of various kinds (DDT, Petroleum Hydrocarbons, heavy metals etc - see below) up to certain prescribed levels. The South Epsom Planning Group has raised questions about the effect of the proposed fill/cleanfill on the groundwater, and on the Auckland aquifers beneath.

Judge Smith encouraged Dr Bellamy to "go for the jugular", he encouraged Bellamy to "not beat about the bush".



So, first up, Bellamy was keen to demonstrate that his team of experts (many seem to hold positions at Auckland University), had investigated Winstone's computer model of the proposed cleanfill/landfill project. It appears they have big questions over the "permeability" the model ascribes to the fill material. Bellamy talked of it being "five orders of magnitude" in error. (In layman's terms that would mean the Winstone's model assumes fill is 100,000 times more (or less - I wasn't sure from the question) permeable, than it really is. This would make a big difference to the rate at which water would percolate through. And make a big difference to its predictions.

Mr Chote wasn't very clear in his answer, but it seems he's not the Winstone's modelling expert. That person comes later. Dr Bellamy was charitable in his explanation of his question. He beat about the bush a bit here - talked about if the model is that far wrong how can you trust its predictions.



But what I was screaming out for him to say, what the whole court must have been busting for him to say, was:

"GARBAGE IN - GARBAGE OUT".....



But he didn't. Dr Bellamy is too well behaved for that.

Pity really. It was like a metaphor for the whole thing. A sort of truth. Almost the elephant in the room. Stands to reason. If you put contaminants in a hole, you'll get contaminants out of the hole. You get back, what you put in. Unless you collect it, trap it, and treat it.

The pictures on this blog are a selection of what you find if you Google "garbage in equals garbage out".