Mountain of rubbish as operator goes bust

A waste operator who claimed noone need worry about him going bust has done just that – and left behind more than 10,000 tonnes of illegally stored rubbish for someone else to clean up.

ERP Group Ltd, of which Michael Corcoran is the only director and main shareholder, was put into voluntary liquidation earlier this month owing about $1.2 million to unsecured creditors and about $200,000 in PAYE and GST.

Apart from debts, the company has left thousands of bales of demolition and construction rubble piled high at two sites in Christchurch – one in Port Hills Rd, Woolston, and the other at the company’s shredding plant in McAlpine St, Sockburn. Corcoran had been fighting local authorities for several years over the unconsented storage of the bales and was supposed to have removed them to an authorised storage facility by the end of last year. The liquidator’s first report said Corcoran blamed the company’s failure on a waste-to-energy plant not being completed and the Christchurch City Council revoking ERP’s waste operating licences.

ERP Group this year applied to the city council for three waste handling licences for three sites in the city, following the lapse of licences for two sites. Council resource recovery manager Ross Trotter said the council had assessed the applications in accordance ‘‘with the considerations in the Cleanfill and Waste Handling Operations Bylaw 2015’’, and decided to decline the applications.

He did not say exactly why the applications were declined.

Last year, Corcoran said people did not need to worry that he would put his company into liquidation and walk away leaving landlords with an expensive waste disposal problem. ‘‘I am not a Chris Skelly or a Michael Le Roy,’’ he said.

Skelly, an English overstayer, ran a demolition business in Christchurch after the earthquakes and left the city in April 2012 to avoid being deported.

His company eventually went into liquidation owing about $5m to unsecured creditors, and he had filled a KiwiRail warehouse in Sydenham with demolition rubble from sites around the city. KiwiRail was left to clean up the mess.

Le Roy, a double bankrupt, illegally stored thousands of tyres at a rural site near Amberley. The tyre pile was torched in 2018 and again last year.

Corcoran did not want to talk to The Press yesterday, as the owners of the land and buildings he rented contemplated the cost of cleaning up, believed to be well over $3m.

Liquidator Brenton Hunt said the company had insufficient funds to pay for the bales to be removed.

ERP rented the McAlpine St site from a lessee of the property. The lessee declined to comment but is understood to be facing a large repair and cleanup bill besides the cost of removing the bales.

Most of the bales are stored in Port Hills Rd. The property is owned by Nuttall Properties Ltd; its directors referred inquiries to their lawyer, who could not be reached.

Carl Storm, the chief executive of Waste Co, a company that competed with ERP, said he had warned people. ERP had been able to undercut other operators because it was not taking much material to the Kate Valley landfill near Waipara, thereby saving on dumping costs and apparently not paying other bills. The bales had no value for recycling as the material had been shredded, Storm said. His facility removed wood, metal and plasterboard from any rubble received, and sent the remainder to Kate Valley.

Corcoran previously said he was storing the bales in the hope a waste-to-energy plant would get the go-ahead in Waimate.

The plant – essentially a sophisticated incinerator that burns waste material to produce steam – has been rejected in Westport and Hokitika. The latest hope is Waimate.