26 April: Greenpeace has filed notice to be heard as an Interested Party on a legal appeal by Taranaki iwi Ngāti Ruanui opposing a Kapuni fertiliser project given approval under the Ardern Government’s Covid-19 fast-track consenting legislation.

Greenpeace Aotearoa Senior Campaigner Steve Abel says "the agrochemical company Ballance has attempted to greenwash its dirty fertiliser factory by bookending it with wind and hydrogen - and the decision making panel fell for it."

"The only thing green about this project is the algal blooms it will cause and the faces of the people it will make sick with nitrate contaminated drinking water," says Abel.

Greenpeace is arguing that the Kapuni decision making panel erred in law by failing to fully account for the environmental effects of urea use, and by not making the promised transition to hydrogen production for transport a condition of the project going ahead.

"Urea is a form of synthetic nitrogen fertiliser and drives intensive dairying, worsens climate pollution, and contaminates rivers and groundwater with carcinogenic nitrate. As it stands, Ballance’s Kapuni project would mean 7,000 tonnes of extra synthetic nitrogen fertiliser every year for at least for the next five years and potentially indefinitely.

"The decision panel overlooked the negative impacts of urea, and essentially approved the project based on potential positive effects of a transition to hydrogen production-for-transport that is not guaranteed or required to ever occur," says Abel.

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