Surprise! There's another 75,000 tons of toxic waste at Tiwai Point!
The Bluff aluminium smelter has revealed it has another 75,000 tonnes of highly toxic hazardous waste stored in buildings at Tiwai Point - and does not have a solution what to do with it yet.Yes, they're poisoning the groundwater and the ocean. Meanwhile, they're dickering with the government over their cleanup liability for when they leave. But morally, that liability is total, and we should accept nothing less (and if our legislation doesn't reflect this yet, we should amend it to say so). As for this waste, Rio Tinto can take it back to Australia with them when they fuck off.The company says all 181,000 tonnes of the waste - another 106,000 tonnes is on a concrete pad close to the beach - is safe and secure.
However, documents show that the storage building floors have cracked in the past and contaminants have had to be pumped out.
They also show that this followed the storage pad cracking, causing "severe" pollution of groundwater with cyanide, but that it was leaking for years before the company cottoned on.
