Te Kāhui o Taranaki Iwi chair Jackie King and New Plymouth mayor Neil Holden are determined to make sure a historic and beautiful tapu site in New Plymouth is fixed by its multinational owner.
From the 1960s through to 1987, Ivon Watkins (later Ivon Watkins-Dow) made the herbicide 2,4,5-T, which contained the toxic dioxin TCDD at Paritūtū. The herbicide was a key component of Agent Orange - the defoliant used by the United States military in the Vietnam War - and has been linked to cancers and birth defects.
Elevated levels of TCDD were found in the soil on the site's boundaries on reserve land and a residential street in the 1980s.
Dow Chemical is due to take back ownership of the plant, which has been demolished, from global agrichemical giant Corteva in the first quarter of 2023.
Holden says accountability definitely sits with Dow, a multi-billion dollar corporation which has booked profits at two billion dollars a year.
“It's a beautiful place, and you've just got this toxic legacy under the ground and Dow has come to the party and it understands that it has got an ethical responsibility to New Zealanders and to the people of New Plymouth to clean it up,” Holden said.
“And we're here to make sure that it's done to the absolute best standard that they can be achieved so we can move past what is quite a dark history for the site and see if there can be some light at the end of the tunnel for our community.”
King says the site is a significant place for Māori as historically it was a town for several generations, with an urupa and it had also been a battleground.
Holden said that Dow Chemical NZ took ownership of the site from the Ag chemical giant Corteva and has made a commitment to a remediation plan.
King said that with the help of Holden, they have been able to apply pressure on companies wanting them to be frank and transparent with the local community that they are a part of.
A report is now before the Taranaki Regional Council which Holden says "captured the high-level summary of all the activity that's gone on there over the past 70 years.”
“We requested that the detailed report go to the council throughout the years that the regional council had been responsible for monitoring and regulating what's gone on there.
“We have had our concerns about that process in the past and a part of that report is to bring us all up to date so everyone's very clear around the stats.”