Gisborne and Hawke’s Bay growers and farmers can temporarily burn waste to help with cleanup

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Orchard workers cleaning up flood debris after floods swept through Gisborne and Hawke’s Bay earlier this year. A temporary law change will allow the burning of mixed waste.

Christel Yardley/Stuff

Orchard workers cleaning up flood debris after floods swept through Gisborne and Hawke’s Bay earlier this year. A temporary law change will allow the burning of mixed waste.

A temporary law change will allow rural Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne growers and farmers to burn mixed waste as they deal with masses of cyclone and flood debris.

Environment Minister David Parker said the temporary change allowed them to replant and return land to productivity.

“The proposed short-term law change would ensure that any burning is subject to proper management standards, helping avoid the risk of these materials being burned in an uncontrolled way,” Parker said.

“Some farmers and horticulturalists, especially in Hawke’s Bay, are under huge stress dealing with the fallout from the severe weather. Many have huge piles of waste, including materials like treated timber and plastics that are not allowed to be burned,” he said.

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Footage shows RSE workers stuck on roofs in Hastings in Hawke’s Bay.

The rule change will expire on December 15, with burning to stop by November 1.

Hawke’s Bay cherry grower Jerf van Beek said he believed allowing temporary burning of waste would help speed up the clean-up process and help growers and landowners with enormous amounts of waste on their sites.

The piles of rubbish could be picked up and moved by truck, but such a process could be unsafe as there was a lot of mixed debris in waste piles, Van Beek said.

“[Moving waste is] a very slow process. I reckon you’ll still be at it in the next 12 months,” he said.

Minister for the Environment David Parker says temporarily allowing the burning of waste means growers can get back to growing.

WARWICK SMITH/Stuff

Minister for the Environment David Parker says temporarily allowing the burning of waste means growers can get back to growing.

Allowing burning meant landowners could get back into production again, he said.

“Clean that land up, put machinery into it and start planting crops. The soil will start to work again. And growers will have an income,” he said.

Burning had the additional benefit that trucks would be kept off roads, he said.

Van Beek said fires had to be managed. “Don’t just make a pile and chuck a match into it,” he said.

Fires had to burn hot, have enough oxygen in them and be constantly “worked” by experts, he said.

Van Beek said public consultation was done because the ministry wanted to be assured that once the order in council came into effect there wasn’t going to be an “armageddon” with “all of Napier and Gisborne starting fires and black smoke everywhere”.

The order allowed burning of waste in the open air if the owner burned waste on rurally zoned land in the Gisborne District or Hawke’s Bay Region and complied with the permitted activity standards.

Parker said to burn waste growers and farmers had to separate materials where possible, prepare a fire management plan, notify the likes of fire services and public health, have a plan for appropriate disposal of remaining waste material and ash and have a plan for site testing and remediation, if required.

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