Press release from Citizens Environmental Advocacy centre. 29th August 2019.

Recent Radio NZ press release covering the Waitangi Tribunal freshwater failures hearings (seen here in this link below) shows a lack of over years of Crown awareness of another “elephant in the room” regarding how other sources of pollution of our freshwater is now seriously been contaminated badly, and shows that the crown over the last 11 years has not used the RMA to protect our degrading water quality, so we wholeheartedly support the tightening of provisions in the RMA to protect our whole natural and built environment to protect everyone in our precious environment.

https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/national/waitangi-tribunal-slams-crown-over-freshwater-failures/ar-AAGrxFe

Regarding the “elephant in the room” being the not previously considered by the crown; - let us clarify;

Recently on (Thursday, 22 August 2019) our centre (Citizens Environmental Advocacy Centre, ‘CEAC’ ) discussed this issue of ‘road pollution runoff’ as the “elephant in the room” in a press release - see in this link below;

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/GE1908/S00089/drinking-water-quality-improved-by-using-rail.htm

Quote; We at CEAC believe ‘this is the elephant in the room now’ as we already know from the ‘NZ Ministry of Transport’ documented studies from the 2002 report entitled “Emission Factors for Contaminants Released from Motor Vehicles in NZ” Fuels and Energy Management Group December 2002. https://www.transport.govt.nz/assets/Import/Documents/9fa2b3a10b/stormwater-emission-factors.pdf
That report shows that tyre particulates have many toxic chemicals that are known to be harmful to humans.

These are already found to be freely released in the tyre dust as we drive and are then washed off our roads into our drains, streams, rivers, lakes and aquifers, and finally into our drinking water, so we are part of the problem already now.

EV vehicles will still emit the same tyre dust toxins as regular gasoline vehicles do.

The new scientific German report https://www.sott.net/article/418585-Plastic-particles-falling-out-of-sky-with-snow-in-the-Arctic
‘Raining plastic’ – QUOTE “fragments of rubber tyres”.

Un-Quote;

So now we see the ‘Transmission Gully’ mega NZTA roading project has been found to be causing the “silt build-up now chocking the nearby coastal estuaries and causing very long term serious damage to the life of all aquatic species including kai moana which is the tāonga - life-blood of Māori Iwi/hapu.

Bluntly; the RMA definitely failed us all here especially over the ‘loosely controlled’ activities of the road builder NZTA;

We quote; Presiding officer Chief Judge Wilson Isaac;

"The RMA has allowed a serious degradation of water quality to occur in many ancestral water bodies, which are now in a highly vulnerable state," he said.

“RMA did not provide adequately for the tino rangatiratanga and the kaitiakitanga of iwi and hapū over their freshwater tāonga.”

CEAC believes NZTA must be “heavily regulated” by having the Ministry of health, Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry of Transport along with the Government stepping in here and placing ‘new controls over the road builder going forwards’ now so NZTA actually comply with strict regulatory rules to protect all those living near their roads in future.

From this time forward we expect to see serious care and consideration be written into the RMA to stop the widespread pollution and emissions of ‘air and water carrying pollution’ and ‘road- runoff‘ being washed of NZTA roads and carried through air pollution from tyre wear from tyre dust and exhaust emissions from over use activities of heavy truck freight particularly.

We at CEAC have always advocated for widespread use of rail, as an environmentally friendly transport system and with national party policy of overuse of ‘freight trucks’ on our regional roads is now destroying our ‘natural/coastal and built’ residential environments alike and endangering our health and wellbeing.

ends

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