Tighter checks on waste disposal

Press, 11 August 1982, Page 20

Tighter checks on waste disposal

Industries discharging toxic waste into sewers face more frequent checks by the Christchurch Drainage Board. Samples taken last month showed that trade waste from metal-finishing industries several times exceeded permitted levels. The board's operations and services committee has been told that industries will be checked more often and at times without warning. The. board's chief engineer, Mr H. P. Hunt, said testing procedures had been allowed to "slip up." Mr Hunt said checks would be carried out more often in the future. The board’s laboratory was able to cope with more samples than in the past. Wastes sampled were cyanide, chromium, copper, nickle, zinc, and cadmium. Nine, firms were tested 437 times during a 10-day period. A permitted level of cyanide discharge was exceeded in 13 per cent of the samples: No firm stayed within the cyanide and heavy metal limitations on all tests. Twenty per cent of tests showed pH levels outside the limits and some firms breached - the limits on the other metals sampled.. ' “There is clearly a need

for considerable improvement in control at many of the establishments sampled." Mr Hunt told the board. The firms involved would be given the results and told that more tests would be carried out. College block A settlement has been reached in the dispute about a new fine arts block built over a stormwater pipeline at St Andrew’s College. After taking legal advice, the college has agreed to move the drain. The board will allow the drain to be rerouted.

School drain An open drain at the Breezes Road Intermediate School has been inspected by the Health Department at the instigation of the member of Parliament for Papanui, Mr M. K. Moore.

The department said the drain would be better piped but it was not a hazard as long as the water did not stagnate. The board decided to ask the owners of properties adjoining the school not to dump rubbish in the drain. Complaints. Fewer complaints about sewage smell at the Bromley

treatment plant seemed to be the result of the board's control efforts becoming more widely known, said the board's chairman, Mr C. H. Russell.

Mr Russell said the publicity given to the board's efforts to combat smell nuisance appeared to have increased public tolerance of the problem. Three reports of smell from the plant were received in July. '