‘Tickets’ for polluting air?

Press, 7 September 1989, Page 4

‘Tickets’ for polluting air?

By

SUZANNE KEEN

Compulsory smoke-free days policed by local-author-ity inspectors should be introduced if the voluntary measure is found to be ineffective, says a report to the Minister of Health, Ms Clark.

An air-pollution-control consultant, Mr Roger Holden, said in the report that on a compulsory smoke-free day it would be made and offence to make smoke denser than the prescribed standard from domestic premises. There would be a ban on domestic rubbish fires as well as the household chimney. Mr Holden said every effort should be made to give the public as much advance warning as possible. Ignorance of a ban would be no defence.

Policing of such a ban would need to be good for it to be effective. Localauthority inspectors could be given powers similar to traffic wardens to issue tickets to householders for infringements, he said. The voluntary smokefree campaign in Christchurch ended last Friday and an assessment of its impact will be presented to the last meeting of the Canterbury United Council.

Mr Holden’s report was briefly considered by the United Council’s air-pollu-tion committee yesterday

and is likely to be the subject of further debate by the new Christchurch City Council and the Canterbury Regional Council. Among his other recommended options for dealing with the pollution problem were placing the onus on the householder to use solid-fuel heater in a way that would minimise smoke emission, incorporating motor-vehicle emission testing as part of the testing for warrant of fitness.

purity probably second to none in the developed world it is perceived locally as being worse than it is.” Ms Clark has told the United Council and the City Council that she believes widespread agreement on the strategies to combat the city’s air pollution problem is essential. She said that one of the disadvantages of the City Council’s proposed amendments to its clean air zone, including the ban on open fires, was that it did not deal with the wider metropolitan area.

Another suggested strategy was the continuation of the householder interest-free loan scheme for replacement of open fires with approved forms of. electric space and water heating. Mr Holden said a domestic coal levy could provide the necessary funding for this scheme and remove its costs from the Government. His report said that Christchurch was not a heavily polluted city by world standards. “The Christchurch winter smog problem is more a nuisance than a health issue, but as New Zealand enjoys a standard of air

The air-pollution committee agreed to write to the transition committees for both the new City Council and Regional Council expressing its concerns about the future direction of air pollution control and alerting them to the discussions on alternative strategies for combating the problem.

The committee’s chairman, Mr Pat Mariner, said he believed it had achieved some good results and he hoped this would continue.