Former sawmill workers and their whānau gathered in Kawerau at a hui organised by Sawmill Workers Against Poisons co-chair Kereama Akuhata.
The hui was held to raise awareness and to encourage former workers exposed to PCP to sign Ministry of Health application forms.
It followed last week’s release of a Te Kāhui Tika Tangata Human Rights Commission report examining the continuing and intergenerational harm reported by workers, whānau and communities.
Whānau call for specialist care
Eilensia Ransfield’s grandfather, Dickie Ransfield, worked in the sawmills for around 40 years and became an instrumental member of Sawmill Workers Against Poisons when the group emerged in the 1990s.
He helped identify chemical dumping sites, joined the group’s journey to Parliament and was remembered as a pillar of his community.
Ransfield believes chemical exposure contributed to health problems suffered by both her grandfather and her father.
“I can absolutely say that had they not been exposed [to dioxins], they would have been around here — they would’ve been koro and papa for far longer than they were.”
She wants affected workers and their descendants to have access to specialists who understand PCP and dioxin exposure, saying an ACC-funded doctor’s visit was inadequate for whānau living with complex harm spanning generations.
“I think it’s surreal, it’s like a sick joke,” Eilensia Ransfield said. “The fact that people have died … the only thing that they have is an ACC-covered doctor’s visit.
“We’re being robbed of our whanaunga. They’re not living as long, and then it’s passed on to myself, and my children also live with that whakapapa. That’s crazy.”
Larry Delamere said responsibility for addressing the harm ultimately rested with the Government.
“It’s a government issue. They were the cause. Thank God Joe Harawira said he wouldn’t let it go by. It should be resolved. Let’s get something done,” Delamere said.
Matakino Simpson-Gilden grew up opposite the former Whakatāne Mill, near where The Hub stands today. She remembered playing in chemical puddles and jumping on piles of woodchips as a child.
“We dived through that, not knowing that it was poisonous. The sawmill workers would yell at us — protecting us but not protecting themselves.”
Simpson-Gilden said she had first learned about dioxins through her brother, a Vietnam veteran exposed to Agent Orange. She was frustrated that more people in Kawerau had not come forward, saying the effects were already being experienced across generations.
Decades on, workers still waiting for action
Alamein Heihei said former sawmill workers had waited decades for action.
“Kei te kimi haere tonu mātou, kei te kimi haere tonu,” hei tāna.
“Kore rā mātou e mōhio e pai ana tērā ki a mātou, nō te mea he wai noa iho. Engari kāore ngā tākuta, ngā rangatira rānei, i te aro ki ō mātou mamae i tēnei wā.”
Heihei said workers had not realised something was wrong until their skin began darkening and chloracne appeared, both recognised signs of high dioxin exposure.
Doctors treated them with pills and plasters, and he said at the time, the Green Party was the only political party willing to listen to their concerns at the time.
Heihei credited Kereama Akuhata with continuing to carry the kaupapa forward for workers who had died and the whānau still living with the consequences.
Like many of the men who entered the sawmills, Jack Kahika had been a fit and healthy rugby player.
Years later, a weeping wound between his toes led him to hospital, where his foot was amputated, and he learned he had diabetes.
Studies have linked PCP exposure to an increased risk of diabetes, but Kahika said former workers had never had access to specialists who could assess their workplace exposure alongside the illnesses they now lived with.
“I look at it through my grandchildren - is it hereditary? Is it going to spread to them? We don’t know,” Kahika said.
From living lake to industrial dump
The Tasman Pulp and Paper Company Enabling Act 1954 gave the company extraordinary powers to establish and operate the Kawerau mill.
It authorised Tasman to take water from the Tarawera River and discharge its liquid industrial waste back into it. The company could also enter private land and construct the works it needed, with reasonable notice required only “if practicable”.
Provided its discharges complied with conditions imposed under the Act, Tasman was protected from prosecution under other laws relating to nuisance or water pollution.
Although his father, Jack Fox, worked at the mill, Tomairangi Fox said his parents were among a small number of whānau who resisted the company’s attempts to cross their land to reach Rotoitipaku.
His father was dismissed from the mill after blocking that access.
He remembered visiting Rotoitipaku as a child, when the lake was similarly beautiful and ngāwhā still bubbled from the whenua.
Protecting Te Waiū o Tūwharetoa became part of his father’s legacy. For Fox, it also preserved an image of what Rotoitipaku had looked like before the contamination.
From 1971, industrial waste that had previously been discharged into the Tarawera River was piped into Rotoitipaku.
Over the following decades, more than half a million cubic metres of waste transformed the lake into a sludge pond.
The lease over the lake and surrounding Māori reservation land ended in 2013. Fox said the mill subsequently withdrew, leaving the trustees with the waste and the risk it continued to pose to the nearby river.
“Once upon a time, there was a lake there. Now there’s no lake, it’s just sludge.”
Fox said bore samples taken around the former lake had detected traces of PCP, indicating the chemical remained within the area. He said proposals to spray the site and plant trees did not amount to proper remediation.
“What they want to do is just spray it, put trees in and walk away - put a sticking plaster on it,” Fox stressed.
The trustees are seeking an environmental bond to protect them from future clean-up costs if the containment structures fail. Fox said they were also preparing a Waitangi Tribunal claim with lawyers Chris Finlayson and Anna Kirk after years of inaction from the Crown.
A warning for future developments
Fox said what happened at Rotoitipaku should warn communities considering major developments to look beyond what was being promised and consider what could be permanently lost.
Although the current Fast-track Approvals Act contains different safeguards from the 1954 law, Fox said Kawerau showed why communities needed to remain vigilant when the Crown sought to accelerate development.
“If they do that, protest. Get your whānau together, get support.”
Minister Responsible for RMA Reform Chris Bishop said the Tasman mill was developed under a different legal and environmental framework from the current fast-track regime.
“It is important not to conflate historic projects with the current fast-track regime on the grounds that both involved efforts to accelerate development,” Bishop said.
“Fast-track changes the pathway and timeframe for obtaining approvals. It does not mean environmental, contamination or heritage effects can be ignored.”
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones pointed to the employment and export earnings generated by Kawerau’s industries.
“The modern environmental guardrails are far more sophisticated than they were 70 years ago. We have learned the lessons of the past,” Jones said.
“We must look to the future regarding the balance between development, environment and community.”
Neither minister addressed the unresolved question of who should be held responsible for the contamination left at Rotoitipaku.
“Somebody’s got to be accountable. It’s not us, the trustees. This is what the Crown created,” Tomairangi Fox said.
