How would you feel about rubbish from all over New Zealand and maybe even overseas being dumped in the South Island?

That’s what could be happening with this new waste-to-energy plant that is planned for South Canterbury. And I would be dead against it.

Fine, if burning rubbish to create energy is a good thing and can be done without munting the environment, go for it. But there’s no way I would be wanting rubbish from the North Island and overseas being brought here.

Why? Well, for starters, I don’t want the Canterbury region to be the rest of the country, and the world’s dumping ground. There are enough stories already about countries which accept our recycling waste saying ‘stop, no more’.

I’ve got other reasons too, which I’ll get to.

So Glenavy —on State Highway One, not far from Waimate— that’s the site where an outfit, with a majority shareholder from China, wants to build this plant which would burn rubbish in a giant furnace and convert it to energy.

These plants are in other countries around the world, and they’re seen as a good alternative to landfill rubbish dumps. Instead of sticking rubbish in the ground, you burn it up and make power.

How they work is the burning of the rubbish creates steam which runs the turbines to make power, and whenever power comes up for discussion, waste-to-energy plants pretty much always gets a mention because some people see them as a better option than some of the other electricity generation alternatives that get talked about, such as using ocean currents.

What’s happened though is a few months back, the Overseas Investment Office provided advice to the Government on the Chinese company wanting to buy dairy farmland at Glenavy to put the processing plant on.

In that advice, which was prepared for Finance Minister Nicola Willis, officials say if the plant goes ahead, it should only accept rubbish from within the South Island.

This was advice from the Overseas Investment Office, which officials put together after getting input from Health NZ, the Ministry for the Environment, the Security Intelligence Service and Foreign Affairs and Trade.

So, they said in their report that “feedstock” for the plant —which is the technical term for the rubbish used to run the furnace— should only be sourced from within the South Island.

The reason the report went to the Finance Minister was that, primarily, it was her job to decide whether the purchase of the land by this largely foreign-owned company would be against New Zealand’s national interest.

And, nine days after receiving the advice, she decided that it wouldn’t, and that the Government was comfortable with the Chinese company buying the land.

But, in the process she overrode the advice from officials that the plant only be allowed to truck-in rubbish from within the South Island. Instead, she decided that it should be left to the resource consent process to decide that. And, as far as I’m concerned, that could be bad news for the South Island.

Because, aside from the fact that I don’t want Canterbury becoming a dumping ground for the rest of New Zealand and other countries, can you imagine the truck movements between Christchurch and Glenavy that would be required on that goat track of a road that we call State Highway One?

These trucks would either come from Picton or they’d go from Lyttelton. Can you imagine the extra amount of traffic?

So the idea of this plant using rubbish from anywhere other than the South Island gets a big “no” from me.

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