Campaign Seeks To Halt 10-Year 1080 Consents

A Coromandel conservation group is spear-heading a national coalition to oppose the granting of 10-year, non-notified resource consent renewals to two helicopter companies for discharge of 1080 toxin into Waikato streams and waterways.

The Upper Coromandel Landcare Association, which opposes use of the poison, believes that Environment Waikato (EW) Regional Council will likely grant the renewals. However, according to UCLA spokesperson Reihana Robinson, “If EW goes ahead and supports contractors EPRO and EcoFX who have been dumping 1080 in the Waikato for years, our conservation coalition calls upon EW to issue only one-year consents instead of the 10-year and 20-year consents applied for. UCLA is also demanding that each toxin operation be publicly notified.”

Robinson said that the decade-long resource consents for non-notified poison drops onto the Waikato and into steams and drinking water catchments that EW issued previously are no longer acceptable. “The public has a right to know and a right to be heard,” she said.

“Every 1080 scenario is unique as to topography, biodiversity, risks, and potential health effects on nearby human populations. For an activity as serious as discharging a hazardous substance into bush and water to proceed without the maximum possible public input and transparency would be a total dereliction of council duty,” Robinson said.

“Ten-year, no-public-input consents have been commonplace around New Zealand for years. But with troubling scientific data emerging regularly and with the massive surge in public awareness and opposition to 1080 use by regional councils, the Animal Health Board and DoC, a change in resource consent policy is a minimum requirement,” Robinson said.

“For a company to get carte blanche to drop poison onto land in the Waikato where it may enter waterways for 10 years is dangerous and outrageous.”

UCLA has been joined in its effort by conservation groups based throughout the Coromandel Peninsula as well as national farmer and environmental groups.

ENDS

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