Fight goes on

Press, 7 May 1983, Page 24

Fight goes on

Meadow Mushrooms will have its new facilities at the corner of Springs Road and Halswell Junction Road in production in a few weeks. But this will not satisfy the Prebbleton residents who have been battling the firm on environmental grounds for more than seven years. The new site is 3km from the Prebbleton factory, and is in a suitable zone, but Mr Derham McAven, chairman of the Prebbleton Action Group, says that composting for the new beds will be done at Prebbleton. It is the composting, and the fumigation of the compost, which is at the heart of the group’s dissatisfaction with Meadow Mushrooms, he says. If the firm were to do its composting elsewhere and truck the material for the beds to the Prebbleton factory, the group would not oppose the conversion of the composting sheds to new facilities for growing mushrooms. “We’ve fought against expansion at the Prebbleton site since before 1976,” says Mr McAven. The group had suggested

other sites for composting to the company, and had had economic studies made about the cost to the firm of this. He does not accept that composting can be done in any way in which there would be no smell. The residents have won

all their legal battles against the company, he says, but the fees have run to thousands of dollars, and the residents cannot afford to seek an injunction stopping the firm from making compost at Prebbleton for the new site. The opposing residents applaud the commercial success of the mushroom farm, says Mr McAven. “We just wish they had taken a more caring attitude towards the environment.”