Tip operators may face prosecution

Press, 7 April 1987, Page 1

Tip operators may face prosecution

The operators of a rubbish tip on Owaka Road, Wigram, may be prosecuted if evidence proves that dumping of toxic wastes in the tip has contaminated domestic water supplies in the vicinity. One resident has complained that the water at her property has been polluted by toxic wastes dumped in one of several lakes in the tip. A North Canterbury Catchment Board report on the well of the resident, Mrs Raylene Secord, said the water was contaminated by hydrogen sulphide and therefore undrinkable. Mrs Secord has had to sink another well at her own expense, because the council refused to connect

her property to the public water supply; Paparua’s engineer, Mr John Annan, told the Paparua County Council’s meeting that if the Catchment Board’s report on the water proved that the contamination was from the dump, prosecution of the tip operators would proceed. Who the operators of the tip were at the time of the dumping is not certain because the tip was under two separate managements. The Catchment Board’s report said other water supplies had escaped contamination. Mrs Secord told “The Press” last evening that her well was not the only supply to be affected.