Author: MIL-OSI Publisher

Source: Radio New Zealand

A crash south of Hokitika on the West Coast has left eight people injured, four seriously.

The multi-vehicle crash happened on State Highway 6 near Donoghues Road in Ross, shortly after 1pm on Thursday.

St John says two people in a serious condition were flown by helicopter to Christchurch Hospital and two others were taken to Greymouth Hospital.

Two people in a moderate condition and two with minor injuries were also taken to Greymouth.

The highway is closed between Kakapotahi and Ross and is expected to be blocked for some time.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Concerned parents and teachers have been bagging up and delivering children’s play sand which could be contaminated with asbestos to designated council centres.

The products had been sold in both New Zealand and Australia and subject to multiple safety recalls.

At the Auckland Council asbestos lab in Auckland’s Grafton, Kedgley Intermediate learning and support coordinator Jane Goodill was shocked to learn they had the sand at her school.

She said she felt “horror” when she realised.

“We had some of the sand. I looked at the bar code and found it was a different bar code than the recalled ones but it was the same product, same colours, same seller, but different weight.”

To be perfectly safe, she said it was decided to get rid of it.

Adrian Blake, an Auckland father, said he and his wife were “pretty shocked” when they heard about the recall.

He said his children had played with the sand.

“I’m shocked that the product standard hasn’t been met. Surprised for a product that kids play with that it wasn’t checked more.”

Blake said he was pleased the council had come up with a solution for families unsure of what to do with the sand.

Auckland Council set up a drop-off site for the sand at the council asbestos lab on Kari St in Grafton.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

The new Wellington City Council have voted to do a review of the contentious Golden Mile project.

Council officers are now predicting the project, which was budgeted to cost $139 million, could cost up to $220 million.

Some works have already begun on the project, but council officers said in October it was discovered that the Courtenay Place works, which are currently under negotiation, are now expected to exceed budget by $15 to $25 million dollars.

It’s the second time this year a budget blowout has been reported on the project. In August a $20 million blowout was reported, but the project was brought back into budget.

Mayor Andrew Little described the review as the responsible thing to do, he said the cost of the project had got to a level where they could not proceed in good conscious as if nothing had changed.

But he said the objectives of the Golden Mile were good.

Meanwhile Deputy Mayor Ben McNaulty said the council couldn’t afford the cost blow out, particularly in light of recent blow outs with the Town Hall and the Sludge Minimisation Plant.

“We can’t afford it, it’s just that black and white”

Councillor Rebecca Matthews said the council had far too many times pressed paused when they should have pressed fast forward.

She was concerned the review could represent the first step in terminating the project. She said she hoped she was wrong in her fears.

The vote passed with 12 in favour and 4 opposed. Those opposed were Matthews, Laurie Foon, Jonny Osborne and Geordie Rogers.

‘Council needs to create an environment where people can afford to live’

New Eastern Ward Councillor Tiefenbacher told councillors he wanted to be proud, but couldn’t be until the council looked back at the end of the term and saw Wellington was a better place than it is now.

He said the council needed to create an environment where people could afford to live, businesses could thrive and there were opportunities for youth.

Fellow new Eastern Ward Councillor Sam O’Brien said many of the challenges Wellington faced were a result of choices, not chance.

He pointed to an infrastructure deficit, unaffordable rents and water challenges.

“None of this is inevitable it is the consequence of decisions to defer and deflect and hope that someone else will deal with it later.”

He said the council needed to invest in public services that made people’s lives better on a day-to-day basis.

Other councillors who made their maiden speeches were Matthew Reweti, Jonny Osborne, Afnan Al-Rubayee and Andrea Compton.

Some Councillors oppose appointment of Ray Chung as chairperson

While discussing chairperson appointments, new councillor Osborne said he, Foon, Matthews and Rogers did not support Ray Chung’s appointment.

“Undermining the mana and integrity of your colleagues by spreading offensive and misogynistic rumours is not good leadership,” he said.

Early this year former Mayor Tory Whanau released an email Chung sent to three fellow councillors in early 2023 recounting a story he’d been told by his neighbour about the neighbour’s son allegedly having a sexual encounter with the mayor.

But Osborne said as “constructive partners” and recognising this was a decision for the mayor, the green faction would vote in favour of the paper.

The vote passed unopposed.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

An engineering issue on a Air New Zealand flight from Auckland to Nelson has forced the plane to return to Auckland.

Fire and Emergency said they were called to the airport shortly after 3pm on Thursday, after being told there’d been an “engine shutdown” on the flight.

Nine fire trucks and more than 30 firefighters were on standby at the airport.

St John ambulance also sent more than a dozen ambulances and its major incident support team.

Air New Zealand said the flight landed safely, and its maintenance team will now inspect the aircraft.

It said the plane had an “engineering issue”.

“We regret the inconvenience this has caused our customers travelling to Nelson this afternoon and we are working to get them to their destination as quickly as possible,” said its chief safety and risk officer Nathan McGraw.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

The Queenstown Lakes District Council has received two abatement notices following a series of failures at Wānaka’s wastewater treatment plant.

Heavy rain hit last month while the Project Pure Wastewater Plant was being upgraded and working at reduced capacity, causing nitrogen levels to spike and treated wastewater to flood disposal fields and run off.

The Otago Regional Council has since issued the two notices calling for the district council to stop discharging treated wastewater to land without complying with its consent.

One of the abatement notices described effluent flowing down an access road, into a nearby property and forcing grazing stock to drive through it to access other paddocks.

Five of the last 12 consecutive sample results for total nitrogen were “very high”, and at least three of them breached the consented limit this year.

District council property and infrastructure manager Tony Avery said the council was fully cooperating and trying to address the issues to become fully compliant as quickly as possible.

But he acknowledged the situation was disappointing.

“With the recent upgrade work now complete, and all three reactors operating as expected, we’re already seeing material improvements in the treated wastewater quality,” Avery said.

“We will continue to keep the community informed while we work through these issues.”

The Otago Regional Council warned that enforcement officers might do inspections to check compliance.

The district council also reported three wastewater ponding incidents between August and early October.

Another ponding incident was reported on 28 October following the heavy rain and a mechanical failure that reduced the capacity of the plant.

The abatement notice said staff diverted process wastewater to the disposal field.

“However, the disposal field was inundated and could not cope with the volume, causing ponding and the overland flow of wastewater down an access road,” the notice said.

When enforcement officers checked the plant on the same day, they estimated effluent to be about 80 millimetres deep throughout the disposal field zones, sludge with the ponded effluent, an odour on occasions and effluent flowing about 300 metres down an access road.

Some of that was discharging through a culvert and onto an adjacent property.

The effluent runoff flooded an access road to a property, forced stock from grazing areas to drive through the effluent to access other paddocks, contaminated silage and concerns were raised about the impact on the health of people, animals and the paddocks, the notice said.

The council did not rule out prosecution under the Resource Management Act if the district council did not comply.

The latest abatement notices followed a spate of recent compliance issues with two of the district council’s treatment plants.

In June, the Environment Court ruled that the council must fix the issues with its Shotover Wastewater Treatment Plant after it was issued with 10 infringement notices and two abatement notices over about a year and half.

The district council has a permit for its Wānaka treatment plant to discharge no more than 26,400 cubic metres of wastewater to the disposal field per calendar day.

The groundwater quality in the bores sampled are not meant to exceed 11.3 grams per cubic metre of nitrate nitrogen.

It also has conditions requiring no ponding or surface run off of treated wastewater and does not allow the discharge of sludge to land or water apart from to an approved landfill.

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Source: Radio New Zealand

Feral cats will be added to Predator Free 2050’s hitlist, a sharp change of policy announced by Conservation Minister Tama Potaka.

Describing feral cats as “stone cold killers”, Potaka told RNZ they would “join their buddies, stoats, ferrets, weasels – mustelids, rats and possums” on the official list for eradication.

The move appears to be a sudden change of tack after RNZ’s reporting this week pointed out Prime Minister Christopher Luxon had promised during a 2023 election debate to add feral cats but failed to do so.

A proposal recently circulated by the government suggested feral cats should continue to be excluded from the strategy and Potaka made no mention of including them when approached by RNZ earlier this month about Luxon’s campaign promise.

But today, Potaka said it had been decided a couple of weeks ago to include them. He would not say why it was announced today.

It marks the first change to the list of species since the target’s inception in 2016, when then-Prime Minister John Key announced the predator free goal.

* See RNZ’s special report on the advance of destructive wild cats across NZ’s native heartland

‘We’ve got to get rid of these killers’

Potaka said feral cats were “stone cold killers”, responsible for killing birds, bats, lizards and insects.

“In order to boost biodiversity, to boost heritage landscape and to boost the type of place we want to see, we’ve got to get rid of some of these killers.”

The number of feral cats in New Zealand is unknown, but estimates range from 2.4 million upwards. They’re apex predators, which have been linked to the extinction of several native bird species. They also hunt bats, lizards, frogs and even insects such as wētā.

The announcement comes ahead of the results of a review of the Predator Free 2050 strategy due to be publicly revealed early next year.

The review included a proposal the public was invited to give feedback on. The proposal suggested feral cats be excluded at present, saying eradication wasn’t feasible. However, it did ask for public feedback on the benefits and risks of not including them.

The decision to not include them in the review drew criticism from conservationists, who said it was a “misread of the room” and the dial had shifted on the public’s understanding and acceptance of the issue.

Potaka said the proposal generated a large number of submissions and the majority called for feral cats to be included in the target species list.

The U-turn on feral cats inclusion, announced today, was welcomed by conservation groups. Chief executive of the charity group Predator Free New Zealand Trust, Jessi Morgan, said she’d been hoping for the inclusion for years.

“I can’t believe it really, I’m thrilled that decision has been made and I think it’s the right decision for New Zealand and I think New Zealand is ready.”

She said public opinion had shifted on the topic.

“There’s understanding that feral cats are a completely different kettle of fish to the cats that are sitting on your lap at night watching Shortland Street with you.”

What will this mean?

Potaka said the inclusion will drive an increased focus on eradication of feral cats.

This could involve investigating different ways to target them through poisoning, such as sausage baits laced with poison, or “spit” based methods where a poison is sprayed on the cat.

“There may be other options in the future, like genetic options or genetic solutions that can help reduce and eliminate any of these predators. Those are yet to be found, of course”

Potaka said scientist Sir Peter Gluckman had been in touch with him on possible scientific advancements which could be implemented.

Potaka didn’t specify what funding would be put behind eradicating feral cats, but said money from the International Visitor Levy was already going toward predator eradication.

Revenue from the levy has emerged at the same time as Jobs for Nature funding came to an end, and the company set up under Key to spearhead Predator Free New Zealand was wound up earlier this year to save $12.6m over three years.

The functions of the company were handed to the Department of Conservation (DOC). Costs for managing the company’s existing projects and contracts fell to DOC, which got no extra money earmarked for Predator Free 2050 other than a transfer of $2.3m already allocated to Predator Free 2050 Ltd.

Morgan, from Predator Free New Zealand Trust, said the inclusion of cats would send a strong message to councils that feral cats are now in the hit list.

“It will impact, hopefully, the policies that regional councils are putting out there to include better measures around feral cats,” she said.

What is a ‘feral’ cat?

The inclusion on the predator hit list has the potential to drive other changes.

Feral cats are wild cats, which survive without human help, and are the only cats targeted for eradication. But the challenge of including a common pet species in the predator free line up could mean pet cats will need protection.

This may come in the form of regulations, such as registration and microchipping. Potaka said he couldn’t confirm if this would happen.

“That’s for another day, and I’m sure that our government, at some stage will look at that more intensely,” he said, adding that it was a hot topic for National MP Barbara Kuriger.

Kuriger and Green MP Celia Wade-Brown have a member’s bill calling for compulsory microchipping and registration of companion cats. Currently, the bill would need to be drawn from a ballot in order to be considered, although the government could also adopt it. Kuriger and Wade-Brown could also get the support of 61 backbench MPs across Parliament for it to be advanced for a first reading.

Potaka said he’s a cat person himself, and owns two rescue cats, Haku and Scout, which has only three legs. He said as a cat lover he has no qualms about cats being added to Predator Free 2050.

“No, I don’t but I want to make sure my cats have their relevant microchips , which they do, and they’re looked after and there’s a very clear distinction between companion cats and feral cats.”

See more about New Zealand’s growing feral cat problem in Feral, a special RNZ investigation]

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand