No ruling on C.F.M. effluent

Press, 27 October 1977, Page 14

No ruling on C.F.M. effluent

No ruling has been made on a Belfast freezing works’ permit to discharge into the Waimakariri River. The No. 2 Town and Country Planning Appeal Board has declined to rule on an appeal by the Canterbury Frozen Meat Company, Ltd, against a refusal by the Regional Water Board to extend a temporary permit allowing waste discharge into the river. In his decision, the chairman (Mr W. J. M. Treadwell, S.M.) said that a further appeal, preferably setting the date by which the Belfast sewagetreatment plant would be functioning, would help the board in a decision on whether the permit under debate was temporary. Under a temporary permit, quality of discharge would not be a fixed criterion, but quantity of effluent discharged would not be allowed to be increased. If no date for the completion of the Belfast scheme were given in a subsequent appeal, its absence would not “render the situation permanent,” Mr Treadwell said. The history of the matter showed that C.F.M. could hardly be blamed for not having built its own treatment works, he

said. Plans had been made that the two works link with the Belfast sewerage plant, but this scheme had been delayed. It would be “undesirable” to force the company to embark at this stage on complicated investigations for its own treatment works which could only be built at great cost, and the works did not have enough land for an oxidation pond system. If they did spend the money, they would probably be unreceptive to linking with the Belfast plant, and the quantity of effluent produced might force the Drainage Board to redesign its plant. “It is, however, undoubtedly a cause of concern to the Regional Water Board, to this board, and to the public in general, that classified water should continue to be polluted in this fashion,’ Mr Treadwell said. “This board would have preferred to have had some definite date for the completion of treatment works, but on the other hand, we have confidence in the Christchurch Drainage Board, knowing it will do as much as possible to carry out its statutory obligations, subject however to the present financial climate.”