Community anger as deadline for controls around toxic gas methyl bromide waived
Tuesday, 4 August 2020
Community groups are outraged that the Government has waived a deadline for log exporters to recapture emissions of the toxic fumigant methyl bromide. TONY WALL reports.
Two years ago, the Environmental Protection Authority told Stuff that after October 28, 2020, anyone using the ozone-depleting gas methyl bromide for pest fumigations would have to recapture and destroy all emissions.
It was a “hard deadline” set in 2010, said Dr Fiona Thomson-Carter, the EPA’s then-general manager of hazardous substances. If industries such as forestry couldn’t show they were using recapture technology for all fumigations, “you’re not going to be able to use [methyl bromide] in New Zealand”.
They were hollow words.
In July, an EPA decision-making committee agreed to waive the deadline for six months, until April 28, 2021, just as community groups feared would happen.
The EPA is currently considering an application by the forestry group Stakeholders in Methyl Bromide Reduction (STIMBR) to re-assess the recapture controls – it was against this background that the deadline waiver was granted.
STIMBR had argued that it needed the extension because of the long lead-time for log exports to India, and how these might be affected by the decision-making process.
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The EPA said the deadline extension was a “temporary measure to make sure the industry can continue to function while the main decision-making process is progressing”.
The waiver would not influence or impact the ongoing process, it said.
But community groups around the country say it’s consistent with the EPA’s pro-industry stance on the issue. They’ve taken to calling it the “Economic Protection Authority”.
“Yet again industry has won over the environment,” says environment lawyer Kate Barry-Piceno ,who works with the Tauranga Moana Fumigant Action Group.
New Zealand is one of the world’s biggest users of methyl bromide, used mostly for killing insects and pests on logs being exported to China and India. Most fumigations happen at the ports of Tauranga, Whangarei and Napier.
Because methyl bromide is known to damage the ozone layer, New Zealand is obliged under international protocols to phase out its use.
Although it is not registered as a carcinogen in New Zealand, it can have neurological and other health effects on humans and there have been several reports of port workers falling ill after being exposed to the gas – which is odourless – during fumigations.
Communities in places such as Picton and Nelson believe that clusters of motor neurone disease and cancer were attributable to the use of methyl bromide at the ports, but there is no firm proof.
The use of methyl bromide was re-assessed by the EPA’s predecessor, the Environmental Risk Management Authority, in 2010, at which point controls around monitoring and buffer zones were implemented – and the 2020 deadline for recapture imposed.
After that date, fumigators would have to have machines capable of recapturing enough methyl bromide that less than five parts per million were left after a treatment.
Fumigators have made some progress on recapture technology in the intervening years but say the technology does not exist to recapture all emissions.
STIMBR wants the definition altered to say that 80 per cent of emissions be recaptured.
An EPA staff report released last week recommends that recapture targets be staggered, so that 80 per cent be achieved by October 2022 and 95 per cent by 2037. It also recommends larger buffer zones than currently in place, and more monitoring.
Barry-Piceno says the staff report indicates the EPA will give the industry what it wants, which she says is outrageous.
“It’s just a repeat of 10 years ago, the same issues,” she says. “It was pushed out 10 years for them to try and get their act together, and they haven’t.”
Gayle Holmes, the EPA’s general manager of compliance, monitoring and enforcement, says the staff report is only one piece of evidence being considered by the decision-making committee.
“The EPA is committed to being completely transparent in the reassessment process.” she says.
“As an independent regulator, the EPA does not prejudge the outcome of any application.”
The decision-making committee will hold hearings next week, where it will hear from those for and against STIMBR’s application, and deliver a decision soon after.
STIMBR chairman Don Hammond says he does not want to comment on the decision to extend the recapture deadline, or the EPA staff report, until after next week’s hearings.
He previously told Stuff that STIMBR had spent around $22m, mostly raised by a voluntary levy on exporters, to find a system that could capture and destroy methyl bromide at the scale needed for log stacks.
'We're not wedded to methyl bromide,' he said. 'Don't think this is an economically driven argument. The real issue is that we actually don't have technology to recapture it and nobody in the world does.'
Barry-Piceno says alternatives are available that would protect the community – such as dedicated fumigation areas away from the public and Australian technology that ventilates methyl bromide through filters with activated carbon granules – but the industry doesn’t want to meet the cost.
“For places like Tauranga, with the port right on the doorstep of a massive residential area and tourist destination, there is no reason why there hasn’t been recapture technology, but for cost,” she says.
The EPA received 72 submissions on STIMBR’s application – 43 in support and 23 opposed. The Bay of Plenty Regional Council was concerned that STIMBR was downplaying the potential exposure to workers and residents.
It recommended the recapture definition be set as a concentration value, or parts per million, rather than a percentage, to make it easier for regulators to enforce.
The EPA staff report concluded that the use of methyl bromide under the proposed recapture definition would have “moderate risks to human health, and negligible risks to the environment”.
The health risks could be mitigated with controls, the report said. Meanwhile, it found the benefits of the continued use of the gas were “significant”.
Barry-Piceno says it appears the authority is “kowtowing to pressure of large industry and putting the economy ahead of the environment.
“Other countries are forcing industry to comply and wear the cost. New Zealand needs to step up and do that.”
Pete Beech, of the Marlborough environmental group Guardians of the Sounds, said in a submission in response to STIMBR’s application for the deadline waiver that it was nothing but a ploy by the industry to avoid its responsibilities.
“The industry has known of this deadline for 10 years and in their arrogance have done nothing to develop recapture technology, they have remained convinced that they would be able to apply enough political pressure to overturn the directive to recapture,” he wrote.
He said a claim by the industry that the restrictions around methyl bromide after October could reduce the flow of logs and lead to non-payment by customers in India was “like a form of legal blackmail, putting pressure on the adjudicators”.
Beech told Stuff that several port workers in Picton had died of cancer – although it was never proven methyl bromide was the cause.
Community pressure over many years eventually led to the ports in Nelson and Picton stopping the use of the gas – logs are now shipped north to places such as Tauranga for treatment.
“The only way that a community can stop the use of this stuff is to protest,” Beech says.
“You’ve got all this pressure coming on from the industry, they’ve got the backing of all these iwi groups because a lot of them have got commercial interests in forestry now, and Federated Farmers.
“There’s a huge amount of support to go back to the status quo. The only ones that are opposed to it are the community groups, and we’ve got no power.”
Beech says the EPA hasn’t done its job on the issue.
“The EPA are the breakdown truck – they are the ones who are supposed to be protecting our communities from health risks like this and yet all they are doing is conspiring with the industry.
“I strongly suspect that they gave them 10 years [in 2010] just to fob us off, just to shut us up.
“I strongly suspect that the whole time they have conspired with the industry to, at the end of the 10 years, to have another reassessment and put it back to the status quo.
“Why else would an industry do absolutely nothing for 10 years if they didn’t believe it would be reversed?”