Northland is home to a number of places which – due to their historical or current use – are recorded on a Hazardous Activities and Industries List (HAIL) maintained by the Northland Regional Council.
Download a copy of Northland's HAIL list (50 KB)
Similar HAILs are maintained by Regional Councils throughout New Zealand.
Several hundred sites feature on Northland’s list which details dozens of industries and activities which typically use or store hazardous substances which could potentially contaminate (or have contaminated) the environment through use, escaping from storage or on-site disposal.
Find out from the Ministry for the Environment website how sites get on this list
Northland’s HAIL also includes a much smaller list of approximately 30 sites where contamination has been officially confirmed, virtually all due to historical uses mostly associated with timber treatment, ex-landfill sites or fuel storage.
All sites on this register are closely monitored by the Northland Regional Council (NRC) and currently pose little risk to human health or the environment.
In the mid-1990s when the HAIL was first compiled by the NRC, an assessment of the potential health and environmental risks posed by each site was made. Sites were prioritised, based on potential risk and a strategy developed to manage those risks.
Any potentially high risk sites were investigated and clean-ups carried out where required. These are primarily the sites on the confirmed contaminated sites list.
Others are no longer on the list, having been cleaned up. It was not considered necessary to carry out detailed investigations of the many sites assessed as low risk, mainly small scale.
Site specific information from both the 600-plus sites on Northland’s HAIL – and the smaller list of known contaminated sites – has been available on request from the NRC for many years.
Further information
General information about contaminated land and HAIL sites is also available from the Ministry for the Environment’s website: http://www.mfe.govt.nz/issues/hazardous/contaminated/
Alternatively, anyone with queries or concerns about hazardous substances in Northland is welcome to contact the NRC’s Hazardous Substances Officer on (0800) 002 004 or email via: mailroom@nrc.govt.nz