Residents consider buying oil plant site

FRANKLIN COUNTY NEWS

EXTREME MEASURES: Otaua residents, from left, Cathie Newton, Donn Sharp, Bill Lee and Susan Jones are part of a group trying to come up with a way they can buy this site in their village so a waste oil plant does not relocate there.

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Otaua residents are so determined to stop a waste oil processing plant moving  to their village, they are looking at ways of raising $843,000 to buy the proposed site themselves.

Waste Petroleum Combustion (WPC) has applied for resource consent to move its plant from Subway Rd in Pukekohe to the site of the old Otaua Tavern in the heart  of the small rural village.

Otaua residents are firmly against the move,  with concerns about safety, odour, noise, potential spills and pollution, increased traffic and a drop in house values.

"It's 80m from a school, 20m from houses, 10km from any emergency services and they are voluntary. It's very clearly not the right thing to do,'' says resident Cathie Newton.

The company's  purchase of the site was conditional on getting resource consent. Now the community has been told if it comes up with the money, the landowner will sell to them, unless the company finds the cash itself within five days of the offer, regardless of whether consent has been granted.

The Otaua Village Preservation Society has begun investigating ways residents could buy the site, such as  fundraising, using their own money, or applying for a grant. All these options raise issues, and if they did manage to come up with the money, there is the problem of what to do with the land. Nobody has yet come up with an idea that would make a profit, without further investment, so it could boil down to a   donation from residents.

Despite the hurdles, the society is not willing to give up the idea.
"The thing about not accepting that we can't do this, is that by continually persisting and looking at this in different ways we may come up with something,'' says Cathie.

WPC collects waste oils which it reprocesses into heating fuels, and directors Lynette and Peter Whitford believe the plant will not affect house prices. They say they have a proud safety record, there is no odour, noise is kept to a minimum, their six trucks do not make enough trips to be deemed heavy traffic, and spills are  minimised.

However, residents do not accept this, and are furious that what they see as a zoning default has allowed the application to proceed. The  site is surrounded by rural and residential properties, but is zoned business because of the tavern.

"It's a peculiar predicament for a council to put its community in, where we're going to have to use a lot of time and energy, and possibly our own money, to stop it. Where's the moral leadership in this?'' says Cathie.

If residents don't buy the site, they say their only other option is to fight it.
"I do get very angry sometimes to be put in this position,'' says fellow resident Glen Lee.
"If they actually are granted resource consent and we have to fight it, it's very expensive. You can't afford it, you're fundraising, there are so many more things in your life that you should be thinking about than that.''

The  resource consent application has been on hold for several months while council waited for more information from the company, which it received last week. The information is currently being reviewed.
Meanwhile, residents have been meeting regularly and familiarising themselves with the resource consent process.