Reefton's stockpiled trash may be treasure to fuel $300m waste-to-energy plant
Tuesday, 19 February 2019
A company planning a waste-to-energy plant in Westport wants to store bales of rubbish in neighbouring Buller township Reefton.
Renew Energy is working on setting up the proposed $300 million plant, which would be owned and run by a Chinese multi-national company.
It lodged a resource consent application with the Buller District Council on January 22 to stockpile and store baled refuse on the outskirts of Reefton, an inland town nearly 80km from Westport.
Waste-to-energy is the process of generating energy in the form of electricity and/or heat from waste, or the processing of waste into a fuel source.
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Reefton resident John Bougen said the application had taken the residents by surprise.
He expected many people in Reefton would be against the proposal.
'It beggars belief. I can't work out why they want to store stuff here when the plant is in Westport,' he said.
He would be speaking to the Inangahua Community Board on the issue at its meeting on Tuesday night.
The land is owned by Birchfield Coal Mines Ltd. One of the directors is Allan Birchfield, a West Coast regional councillor. He referred comment to his brother, Gary, who could not be reached for comment.
A council spokeswoman said the application was on hold with a request for further information.
The application says 2ha block is about 1km north of Reefton and used to store coal.
The baled refuse would predominantly be construction waste mainly waste timber and other combustibles recovered from construction sites.
'The waste will be sized, compacted and wrapped into bales and will look similar to a stack wrapped silage bales which are commonly seen on rural properties throughout New Zealand. The method of bale wrapping has been designed to ensure that the bales are robust and not prone to damage,' the application says.
The site was chosen because it was near a rail link and had the permission of neighbouring landowner New Zealand Sustainable Forest Products.
The application says the bales will arrive at the site via train from processing facilities initially in Canterbury and in the future other South Island facilities to be stockpiled until the proposed waste to energy plant is constructed at a yet to be determined site in Westport.
The bales will provide fuel for the waste-to-energy plant once commissioned and as such will only be stored for a period of up to three years.
Bales will be stacked about 10 bales high giving an approximate stack height of 12.5m.
It says there will be about 240 bales arriving every day, five days a week, and up to 66,000 tonnes each year for the first two years of operation.
The environmental effects of the proposed activity are less than minor, it says, and because of the enclosed nature of the bale, no discharge will occur from the bale stockpile area.
Renew Energy chief executive David McGregor said he was unavailable for comment until he returned to New Zealand next week.
Reefton-based deputy mayor and Inangahua Community Board chairman Graeme Neylon said he and the council chief executive Sharon Mason would be outlining the consent process at the meeting. He expected people with concerns would speak at the public forum.
'It's news to everybody and I've been getting flak from people saying 'how can the council even allow this application to go in?'
'We've brought in an independent planner so that everybody can be assured there is no bias. The biggest question is whether the application will be publicly notified and that decision is being made at the moment by staff.'