Capital under threat of pine slash

By Frank Neill

Wellington is under threat of pine slash should a storm bringing major rainfall hit the capital, International Consulting Disaster Engineer Michael James warns.

“Forestry pine waste/slash sits on hillsides all over New Zealand like disaster time bombs waiting to happen, just as it did in Hawkes Bay and Gisborne,” Michael says.

Hundreds of small rural communities all over New Zealand are just sitting in blissful ignorance, waiting fortsunamis of commercial pine forest waste to destroy their communities in the future.

“City suburbs are also under threat of pine slash/waste destruction.

“For example a 15-minute drive away from the Minister of Forestry’s office in Parliament Buildings, in the middle of Wellington’s CBD, are hillsides covered with loosely strewn pine slash/waste.

“This mountain of commercial pine waste/slash purportedly is just waiting for the next big storm to flood it off the hillside and smash through Makara beach settlement.

“Just up the road, Waikanae is also ostensibly a sitting duck.

“As with pine slash/waste destroying bridges in the East Coast region, all the bridges on State Highway 1 between Wellington and Bulls purportedly are under threat.

“These bridges carry the nation fibre-optic link cables for the whole of Wellington and NZ Government.

“These are not just imaginary threats,” Michael says.

“For instance, logging in the Marlborough Sounds district is vast, andforestry waste/slash purportedly is often flooded into the sea and trapped in the Marlborough Sounds.

“Such forestry waste can float for years at or just below the sea surface.

“The Cook Strait Ferries travel through the Marlborough Sounds 24/7 every day of the year and purportedly are at risk of severe damage due to the threat of colliding with hazardous forestry slash.

“There seems no (or realistically insignificant) physical evidence that MBIE (the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment) has done anything to stop future forestry waste/slash timebombs, which purportedly are already waiting on hillsides to flood down and destroy North and South Island communities and public infrastructure,” Michael says.

Michael has been a professional engineer for 35 years, with 25 years as a geotechnical engineer and 10 years as an international Consulting Disaster Engineer (including such disastersas

Just after his recent contact with the “Independent Herald” he was “about to go back outside and spend the rest of my day spading knee deep, stinking mud and pine slash out of innocentmostly povertystricken people’s homes.

“Why is it the poor that always suffer the most?” he asks.

“The New Zealand Forestry industry is a billion-dollar operation.

“To make a profit the forestry industry must harvest a crop every year, which means new pine seedlings must be planted over logged land every year. But planters of new pine tree seedlings cannot get their shovels into the ground which is covered in pine tree waste/slash.

“It is not cost effective to sparsely plant pine seedlings between pine slash, because there’s just such a huge volume of slash/ waste. Also, it is incredibly dangerous, from a Health and Safety perspective, to scramble over waste pine branches and logs to plant new pine seedlings.

“Clearing pine waste/slash with machinery would cost the New Zealand forestry industry hundreds of millions of dollars every year.

“Along with the huge expense needed to purchase land for slash dumps, designing waste dumps, getting council consents, and managing such commercial pine waste dumps.

“But the New Zealand forestry industry purportedly has a far less expensive way to get rid of pine waste.

“Vast savings/profits may be made by the forestry industry every time there is a decent rainstorm, which floods and at the same time clears the pine waste/slash off their hillside properties,” Michael says.