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Woe piles up around waste bale operation

Martin van Beynen martin.vanbeynen@stuff.co.nz

As the rubbish bales pile up, so do Mike Corcoran’s problems.

Corcoran is the managing director of ERP Group, which runs a rubbish baling facility in Sockburn, Christchurch.

He is not allowed to store the bales, containing mainly building and demolition waste and each weighing between 700 kilograms and a tonne, at the site, but still has about 4000 stacked there.

Another 10,000 bales are stored at a site in Woolston, some in warehouses and others in open yards. The illegality of the storage was revealed by The Press last week.

Corcoran hopes to sell the bales of rubbish – which he calls ‘‘refuse-derived fuel’’ – to a yet to be built waste-toenergy plant planned for Waimate.

Environment Canterbury (ECan) says the bales in the warehouses are not its concern but confirmed

ERP Group must get a consent for storing the bales in the open yards or remove them.

Christchurch City Council said this week its compliance team was investigating whether a resource consent was needed from the council for storing the bales in the buildings.

Corcoran told The Press that the owner of the open yards where the bales were stacked had also told him to remove them, a development that would cost him many thousands of dollars.

Corcoran said he expected to soon secure a facility to which he could move the illegally stored bales.

He is also negotiating with the landowner on whose land he is storing bales in the open. He did not want to talk about his ‘‘wrangle’’ with the city council.

Pressure on the local authorities to do something about the bales is also coming from ERP’s competitors, who believe ERP can undercut them by not paying the costs of disposing of the rubbish at an approved disposal facility such as Kate Valley.

Carl Storm, a director of competing waste disposal business WasteCo, said his company had invested millions of dollars in plant and equipment that allowed it to divert more than half the waste it processed away from landfills.

For instance, gib board is sent away for compost, metal goes to Metalcorp for recycling and clean wood is chipped for boiler fuel.

Clean fill and bricks are removed and cardboard is hand sorted. Polystyrene is also processed.

‘‘This is a stark contrast to the operation at ERP, which is then allowed to illegally

stockpile the waste in unconsented sites without paying landfill disposal costs,’’ he said.

The advantage ERP gained by not paying disposal costs was in the millions of dollars, Storm claimed.

He was disappointed the playing field had been tilted by ECan, allowing ERP to operate outside their agreed resource consent conditions.

‘‘ECan has allowed this to continue for way too long. They could and should have acted at the time they realised he had breached his first consent condition, but certainly within three months.’’

He wrote to ECan on Monday asking if the other four transfer station operators would be given the same latitude if they all stockpiled waste instead of taking it to Kate Valley.

Storm encouraged builders to ask where their skip providers were taking their waste.

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en-nz

2021-11-27T08:00:00.0000000Z

2021-11-27T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://stuff.pressreader.com/article/281758452559808

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