ECan says contaminated site list needs work

Environment Canterbury's new chairman may release a list of the region's contaminated sites, but only after more research.

The Ombudsman has ruled that all councils should publicly release their Hazardous Activities and Industries List (HAIL) of contaminated sites. The Greater Wellington, Environment Waikato and Environment Southland regional councils are set to release their lists this week.

ECan chairman Alec Neill said it was not opposed to making its HAIL list, of about 4000 potentially contaminated sites, available.

"Some of them would still be contaminated, such as those which were old service station sites, with leaking tanks, but on others the contamination is minimal, such as farms which had sheep dips. The study needs to be completed in its entirety before we release them all in a list to the public. Once that research is done, we will know which sites are still contaminated, and which no longer pose a risk."

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