Deal under fire as ouvea premix removal discussed at meeting

Monday, 29 July 2019

The Gore District Council came under fire at a Mataura Community Board on Monday night as chief executive Steve Parry was questioned about a deal he brokered to remove a hazardous substance from the town's paper mill buildings.

A report from Parry about the removal of the ouvea premix was tabled at the meeting. The report says only 1500 tonnes of the 10,000 tonnes of ouvea premix will be removed in the first year of a three-year deal to remove the substance.

At the start of the meeting, Sort Out The Dross action group spokesperson Cherie Chapman and members of group urged board members to question the council about the removal.

Chapman said she was 'dead opposed' to the deal and said it was a 'stalling tactic'.

**READ MORE:

* Deal for 1500 tonnes of hazardous substance to be removed from Mataura

* Deal signed to move ouvea premix from Southland warehouses**

The premix is an oxide residue which is a waste by-product of the aluminium making process at the Tiwai smelter.

It was left in the former paper mill at Mataura and at sites at Awarua, near Invercargill, after Taha Asia Pacific went into liquidation in August 2016, after its contract with New Zealand Aluminium Smelters to process the ouvea premix expired and was not renewed.

'We are all victims of this situation. But for this to take three to four years is just not good enough - that's one truck load being moved from Mataura a week,' Chapman said.

The ouvea premix will be moved to Inalco's processing plant at Tiwai Point, where the company will 'experiment' with it to produce a product for the marketplace, the report says.

'That whole notion is rubbish. Those people know what's in the bags and they don't need a year to experiment,' Chapman said.

'What is plan B? because I'm not seeing one in this document,' she said.

Chapman urged the 11 parties that had signed the deal to go back to the Government and fight for a shed to be built at Tiwai which would be big enough for all the ouvea premix in Southland to be held there.

'Lets take the elephant in the room to Tiwai. It has huge amounts of space - because this is just not good enough.'

She said the bags holding the substance in the Mataura building were deteriorating and the ouvea  premix, a class 6 hazardous substance, releases poisonous ammonia gas when wet. The building is next to the Mataura River.

'Last year you nearly had a flood and a lot of people were nervous about that. That stuff is ecotoxic and it will do a great deal of harm - it is a huge issue.'

She urged community board members to ask questions about the deal.

'This is your legacy and your community and if it all goes wrong, this is what you will be remembered for. You have a responsibility to be highly vigilant.'

She said they should question what consents were needed, whether further stopbanking was needed on the river and what evacuation plans were in place if something went wrong.

In response, Parry said there was a plan B if Inalco was unable to process the ouvea premix.

'Am I going to divulge it? No I'm not. It is something that has just been placed in the background if things don't go according to plan in terms of progress,' Parry said.

He said the contract had milestones that had to be met, so it was not open-ended and would not take longer than six years.

'Im satisfied the risk to the council has been managed in a financial sense. In terms of the environment, we acknowledge what we've got, but the reality is that we have now had this dross, ouvea premix, in Mataura for three to four years and we could have spent another two years chasing gold at the end of the rainbow.'

Board chairman Alan Taylor commended Parry on the deal, saying it was 'the best news we've had to date'.

Board member Greg Chaffey said board members were all concerned about the ouvea premix, a problem they had inherited.

'We want it gone, but you talk about the elephant and the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.'