Number of P labs causes concern

BY SALLY KIDSON

The police have found five clandestine methamphetamine laboratories in the Tasman police district so far this year, the same number of labs discovered in Auckland city.

They are warning the owners of rental houses that if their home is uncovered as a clandestine lab, it will be put on the house's council Land Information Memorandum (LIM) report and could affect the property's future sale.

Detective Senior Sergeant Wayne McCoy, of the Nelson CIB, said the Nelson police now had a full-time drug detective and Nelson was not immune to methamphetamine.

The police had visited three suspected methamphetamine labs in the Nelson region this year – one in Wakefield, one in Nelson city and one in Dovedale. The other two in their district were in Blenheim and on the West Coast.

Mr McCoy said ensuring properties used as clandestine labs were cleaned up was up to local councils, because it was a public health issue.

Homeowners should be aware that if they rented their properties to undesirable tenants who started to make methamphetamine at the address, the fact the property was busted as clandestine lab would be put on council LIM reports.

Minister of Health Tony Ryall has just released new guidelines for cleaning up clandestine methamphetamine labs.

He said the guidelines were a New Zealand first and were requested by councils, landlords and communities.

"Most illegal meth labs are set up in residential properties, where they can leave extremely hazardous residues for the offenders and their families living there, or for people cleaning up after them."

The number of clandestine labs found nationally has increased from nine in 2000 to 135 in 2009.

Mr Ryall said the guidelines provide consistent and practical advice for checking and dealing with contaminated sites so they could be reoccupied without serious health risk.

Health effects from the methamphetamine manufacturing process depended on the amount of chemicals and length of exposure and other variables, including the age and health of the person.

Tasman District Council regulatory services co-ordinator Graham Caradus said the council probably dealt with two clandestine labs a year.

The labs came under the council's work in public health.

Mr Caradus said the council had spent several hundreds of dollars buying equipment that enabled it to do screening tests at clandestine labs, which picked up traces of a number of drugs.

It then worked with property owners to make sure the properties were cleaned up.

The cleanup process could be easy, but depended on the co-operation of the property owners, he said.

In one case, a person was still living at the property where the police had found the clandestine lab, which had made the process difficult.

In another situation, the property owners had taken it upon themselves to clean and paint the house, even though it wasn't believed to be that contaminated.

Mr Caradus said a lot of the labs found in the Tasman district he had dealt with were fortunately places where chemicals had been stored or where the police believed a lab might have been established but was not operating.

Nelson City Council environmental health officer Stephen Lawrence said the council did not pay for testing properties and that was up to the property owners.

It was also up to property owners to see that any contamination was cleaned up.

He estimated that two to three clandestine labs in Nelson a year were uncovered.

Some of the labs were low level, but others were more significant.

- © Fairfax NZ News