Contaminated land

Contaminated site management

Part of the ARC's responsibilities under the Resource Management Act (RMA 1991) is to ensure that any contamination is cleaned up to a specific land use standard and with consideration of the sensitivity of the receiving environment by avoiding, remedying or mitigating any adverse effects.

Management of this responsibility is achieved by:

• Discovering whether or not a property is contaminated
• Assessing the risk
• Minimising the risk
• Rules and regulations

Discovering whether or not a property is contaminated

There are a number of systems and services set up to inform you whether a site or property is contaminated, or potentially contaminated.

• Hazardous Activities and Industries List (HAIL) - a comprehensive list of potentially hazardous land uses that could lead to contamination
• A contamination site enquiry - ordered from our team to provide information held by the ARC on a site, and any pollution history, and any relevant consents from the surrounding area
• Land Information Memorandum (LIM) - available from city and district councils, this report also provides historical land uses on council records.

Assessing the risk

• Engaging a consultant to carry out an environmental site investigation, once it has been determined that the historical or the present land use has the potential to cause contamination on site the ARC recommend an experienced environmental consultant is engaged to undertake a site investigation.
  Once the investigation has been completed, the ARC requires the investigation results to be assessed against the ARC's regulations for contaminated sites.  Refer to rules and regulations section.
• Resource consent process , resulting in a decision on whether you can do remedial work to remove the contamination, have to restrict land use, or comply with the rules of a consent permit
• The Ministry for the Environment (MfE) have also developed a Rapid Risk Screening System for ranking contaminated sites as LOW risk, MEDIUM risk and HIGH risk. This is a useful tool, but isn't used by the ARC when determining whether a site is contaminated.

Minimising the risk

• Report any pollution incidences to the ARC pollution hotline on 09 377 3107. The team operates 24 hours a day so they attend to reports daily
• Dispose of hazardous substances correctly
• Transport hazardous substances safely
• Apply safe practice when using and storing hazardous substances.

Rules and regulations

The regulations surrounding the use and management of contaminated sites are outlined in chapter 5 of the Air Land and Water Plan (ALWP).