The dangerous work

906 Christchurch parcels sit on the council’s hazardous-activities register, the HAIL, the list every region keeps of ground where contaminating trades ran or are suspected to have run. Petrol stations, chemical works, metal finishing, the odd sheep dip, about 1,502 hectares of ground that did dangerous work.

Parcels listed

906

Ground on the list

1,502 ha

Still doing the work

468

312 former sites

Remediated

109

cleaned up or partly

The register, drawn

Every listed parcel over the suburb outlines, red still does the work, amber is former ground, green has been remediated, grey never got a status. Hover a parcel for its listing.

By the work

Chemical manufacture, application and bulk storage 175 current · 135 former · 86 remediated 401

Vehicle refuelling, service and repair 214 current · 40 former · 6 remediated 260

Cemeteries and waste recycling, treatment and disposal 38 current · 100 former · 9 remediated 156

Metal extraction, refining and reprocessing, storage and use 26 current · 13 former 39

Mineral extraction, refining and reprocessing, storage and use 7 current · 13 former · 3 remediated 23

Any other land that has been subject to the intentional or accidental release of a hazardous substance in sufficient quantity that it could be a risk to human health or the environment 3 current · 7 former · 3 remediated 16

Explosives and ordinances production, storage and use 3 current · 4 former 7

Any land that has been subject to the migration of hazardous substances from adjacent land in sufficient quantity that it could be a risk to human health or the environment 2 current · 0 former · 1 remediated 3

Electrical and electronic works, power generation and transmission 0 current · 0 former · 1 remediated 1

Where the listed ground sits, by suburb

By the count of listed parcels, the suburb with the most register entries first.

Each listed parcel files under the suburb its exterior’s middle sits in, the count of parcels, their hectares, and the kinds of work. A listing records the work, not a soil test.

Questions, answered briefly

What is the hazardous-activities register?

The HAIL, the Hazardous Activities and Industries List. Every region keeps one: parcels where work that can contaminate land ran or is suspected to have run: petrol stations, chemical works, metal finishing, sheep dips, gasworks, dry cleaners. Christchurch’s register holds 906 parcels, about 1,502 hectares.

Does a listing mean the ground is contaminated?

No, the register records the *work*, not a soil test. A parcel earns its place by what ran on it; whether the ground actually carries anything is a separate investigation the register exists to trigger. Many records sit "not verified": leads the council keeps, not findings it made.

What kind of work gets a parcel on the list?

In Christchurch the biggest entries are vehicle refuelling, service and repair, the petrol stations, and chemical manufacture and bulk storage, then cemeteries and waste disposal, metal works, and explosives handling. 468 parcels are listed as still doing the work; 312 are former sites, the ones whose use has already moved on.

Where does the register sit alongside the buried city?

Next to it, /landfills is where the city *tipped* its waste; this page is where it *made* and *stored* the hazardous things. A parcel can sit on both. A point’s own answer is at /before.

The record behind this

Christchurch City Council’s open land layers, the ContaminatingActivity layer of OpenData/LandCharacteristic, the region’s HAIL register. A listing records the work, not a soil test; "not verified" entries are leads, not findings, and status is the register’s own. Ask a point’s own record at /before; where the city tipped its waste is /landfills; the ground that went under is at /floods; the ground it made is at /fill.

This page as markdown: /hazards.md · the record as data: /hazards.json · /hazards.geojson · /suburb-hazards.json · on the live map: /map?layer=hazards.