Mata Reports: Toxic Legacy - A Fast Track to Failure?

Mata with Mihingarangi Forbes

In this new video investigation from the Mata Reports series by the Aotearoa Media Collective, Mihingarangi Forbes and Annabelle Lee-Mather visit Kawerau and hear warnings about the fast-track legislation.

Watch the video version here.

As the country debates the merits of fast-track legislation, Mata Reports looks at an early example, one that took place in Kawerau under the 1954 Tasman Pulp and Paper Company Enabling Act.

The government of the time, committed to industrial development, led to the paper industry boom enabled by an abundant supply of raw material from maturing pine forests, planted decades earlier around the war.

But with the jobs and the profits came the issue of waste. Tasman Pulp and Paper Mill owners were looking for somewhere to dump industrial waste and soon after they decided they had found the perfect place.

Te Kete Poutama, an area of land on the outskirts of Kawerau, to the eye it looked like it wasn’t being used - a convenient place to pipe sludge, other than the Tarawera River which had become known as the Black Drain.

Despite the resistance from some Māori who believed the whenua and the nearby lake Rotoitipaku was significant and historic – the captains of industry had the law on their side.

“When [my parents] tried to argue with the people involved they said, ‘Well … there’s nothing you can do’,” says Tomairangi Fox, of Ngāti Tūwharetoa ki Kawerau.

Back in 1954, Parliament had passed the Tasman Pulp and Paper Mill Enabling Act, which fast-tracked its construction and gave the company sweeping rights to use land and waterways.

Decades on the boom days are well and truly over, the unemployment rate is nearly three times the national average and in 2018 New Zealand Index of Multiple Deprivation in the Bay of Plenty found Kawerau as one of the most deprived communities.

And with the growth in automation and newsprint in decline, the jobs Kawerau families relied upon had all but disappeared.

The mill is gone, too, with paper production cut in 2021, leaving hundreds jobless.

Meanwhile the original owners of the land used as a dumping ground have been left wondering whether their whenua can ever be restored – and who will pay.

The owner of the mill when it ceased operations, Norwegian-owned Norske Skog Tasman, has gone into liquidation.

The Bay of Plenty Regional Council has asked engineering experts to consider a “closure plan” for the dump site, and Norske Skog says money has been left aside to cover the proposed rehabilitation work.

But Fox and many others are concerned about the future of their whenua…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details