Wellington, Feb 17 NZPA - The Government's proposed national environmental standard for dealing with sites with contaminated soils is likely to have "substantial effects" on some developers, land-bankers and property investors, says a major law firm.

The proposed new standard may affect land values in cases where contaminated sites become subject to more stringent planning controls than applied now under existing district plans, according to an analysis released today by Chapman Tripp partners John Hassan and Jo Appleyard, and another lawyer in the firm, Paula Brosnahan.

They said today the new standard may result in additional investigation and application costs for landowners who seek to develop affected sites, and technical reports may become more commonplace in resource consent applications, with applicants paying the costs.

Council resources may be strained due to a lack of in-house expertise to interpret technical reports, leading to processing delays, and the standard will have implications for the level of information that councils hold regarding the presence of hazardous substances on land.

"These sorts of issues could drive the topic of contamination closer to the front of land deal negotiations," said the lawyers, who noted some people buying or selling property may need to allow for the potential risks and costs.

The Government has called for submissions on the standard by April 19 and Ministry for the Environment staff plan to hold regional workshops to consult the public during March.

The ministry has previously criticised planning controls in district and regional councils for the assessment, remediation or containment of contaminated soil as being either non-existent or inadequate and inconsistent.

It has estimated that councils have identified around 20,000 potentially affected sites, with only a small proportion having been investigated sufficiently to determine the presence of contaminants.

The most common activities that have led to site contamination are the manufacture and use of pesticides, production of gas and coal products, production, storage and use of petroleum products, historic mining, timber treatment and sheep dipping.

In some cases, central Government has already picked up the costs, such as at one of the worst contaminated sites, Mapua, in the Nelson region, where it has helped pay for soil remediation work to clean up the site of a former factory manufacturing and storing agricultural chemicals.

And in Southland, it bought contaminated land from three farmers with dieldrin dumps on their farms -- some of whom complained the dumps had stripped hundreds of thousands of dollars in value from their Flaxy Creek properties.

The secret dieldrin dumps contained of a cocktail of up to 13 pesticides, including DDT, dieldrin and lindane, which were buried by the Lands and Survey Department in the 1960s, before the land was subdivided and sold or balloted.

The pollutants were buried in drums by workers who shot holes in the drums to allow the material to drain into the soil.

The new standard, to be created under the Resource Management Act, will be able to set direct controls on land use and other activities, potentially affecting any new designation, application for resource consent for subdivision or development of land, or the review of any existing resource consent conditions.

NZPA WGT kca mgr