Contaminated Sites

There are numerous contaminated sites throughout New Zealand; many of these sites have been contaminated by historic activities including:

Type of site	Main areas of concern
The manufacture and use of pesticides, this includes where the products were made, stored and used	Many pesticides and herbicides used historically are persistent organic pollutants.
Old gas works sites	Tars, oils, hydrocarbon sludges, spent oxide wastes, ash and ammoniacal recovery wastes.
Production, storage and use of petroleum products	Leaching of the petroleum products into the surrounding soils and potentially the ground water.
Historic mining	Mining may have released a wide range of heavy metals into the surronding environment, for example mercury was used historically to extract gold.
Timber treatment	Timber treatment uses a variety chemcials, the main ones being: Copper Chromium Arsenic Boron Pentachlorophenol (no longer used)
Sheep dips	Dipping sheep in New Zealand was a legal requirement from 1849 to 1993. A range of chemicals have been used, a list of the main ones is attached below: Arsenic Rotenone Organochlorines Organophosphates Synthetic Pyrethroids

The National Environmental Standard for Assessing and Managing Contaminants in Soil to Protect Human Health (the NES) came into effect on 1 January 2012. This Standard affects what property owners and contractors can do on sites that may have been contaminated.

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The Standards require owners to engage a specialist environmental consultant to undertake all the required investigations and the application for any necessary resource consents. These consultants need to be guided as to the desired outcomes that you want, in addition the significance of various findings need to be understood in relation to a client’s specific requirements.

Contractors when implementing the requirements set out by the environmental consultant need to understand the additional operational considerations required when undertaking these works, as significant environmental and safety measures are needed.

LADRA has the experience necessary to act either as the client’s or the contractor’s environmental advisor on any size of contaminated site cleanup. LADRA’s experience has been greatly strengthened by the many and varied contaminated sites discovered and appropriately managed as part of the Christchurch earthquake recovery.