Christchurch residents in Woolston are furious about the appearance of stacks of shipping containers beside the Ōpāwaho Heathcote River, claimng they pose a safety risk for users of an adjacent walkway.
The developer of the storage yard, where some stacks stand more than 15m high, is equally annoyed the city council has classed them as buildings, and wants to limit their height to 11m.
Richard Peebles said the transitional container facility was in an industrial zone, and he has no intention of forcing the operators to cut stacks of six containers down to just four.
However, following complaints from residents, and a Stuff report about falling containers at the Port of Lyttelton and a nearby container yard, he has asked the operators of the transitional container facility MetroBox for a “robust” health and safety report.
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KAI SCHWOERER/Stuff
Wayne Wright regularly cycles along the Heathcote River path, but says the height of the containers is a risk, particularly in an earthquake or high winds.
“If it comes to that, and we have to set them back further to mitigate the risk, that’s something they will just have to do.”
Cyclist Wayne Wright, a regular user of the riverside path that runs below the containers, said he was uncomfortable riding past the towering stacks which are about 22m from the track, separated by a bund of earth.
The stacks are not tied down, and while some are stepped back, others are six-containers high right on the boundary, and he worries they could topple in an earthquake or high wind.
“That little bund is not going to stop them if they come off and start rolling down [the bank], anyone down here is gone.”
Malcolm Long, a member of the Ōpāwaho Heathcote River Network, said the stacks were only a metre from the boundary fence, and the distance to the riverbank did not meet 30 metre set back required by the district plan.
KAI SCHWOERER/Stuff
This container storage yard in Woolston has been told to reduce the height of stacks at the northern end to 11m. Some stacks 6 containers high are more than 17m, but the height limit is disputed by developer Richard Peebles.
City councillor Yani Johanson says the pathway is well-used, there was undoubtedly potential for containers to be blown over in severe winds, and he says the situation highlights the need for national standards for container stacks.
“Why wait for an accident to happen before you act?”
When WorkSafe was approached by local MP Tracey Mclellan, the agency said it “did not have any specific guidance for stacking shipping containers,” and looked to overseas standards such as those used in Australia.
The Australian standards recommended securing containers to the ground with lashings, and positioning them so that if they fell then remained within the site or fall zone.
On Wednesday WorkSafe told Stuff it had drafted a guide for the safe stacking of shipping containers, which would go out for public consultation, before publication early next year.
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More than 50 empty shipping containers blown over at Lyttelton Port in August had to be lifted back into place with cranes, an exercise workers were told had cost about $30,000.
Appearance of the containers led to a community meeting with council staff, and in late July Johanson raised concerns about the lack of district plan requirements for shipping container depots near residential areas.
In August a council report said that when the land was rezoned to industrial in 2008, a height limit of 11m was imposed within 130m of the river because of proximity to residential housing, but there were no height limits on the rest of the industrial area, or for outdoor storage.
However, preliminary legal advice was that a permanent stack of containers was defined as a building, “although this could be challenged, and further information is required to understand this.”
The council has received 30 complaints about noise from the site since June, and head of planning and consents John Higgins said there was an ongoing investigation into compliance with district plan rules.
It was too early to say whether remedial work would be needed, or a resource consent application would be required.
Pinnacle Corp, which owns Metrobox, has eight storage yards around the country and expects to have about 4500 containers on the Woolston site.
Health and safety manager Aaron Temperton said any site-specific hazards were identified and dealt with, and while stacks eight high containers high were common in the industry, lashing them down was not.
“I’m not aware of any container depot in the country that lashes containers, in this country or globally.”
Temperton said he had never heard of councils restricting stack heights to a level which effectively halved the capacity of a storage site.
“That will have consequences for the efficiency of import and export supply chains that have already been significantly disrupted.”
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story stated that some container stacks were more than 17m high. Richard Peebles also said operators would not be required to reduce the stacks to four high,not three high as previously reported. (Amended at 1.45pm, September 29, 2022)
