How Musician Anthonie Tonnon Tells the Story of a Small Town Environmental Disaster Through Song

How Musician Anthonie Tonnon Tells the Story of a Small Town Environmental Disaster Through Song

Anthonie Tonnon is a captivating, albeit contrived, musician and performer. Always dressed to the nines and sporting funky dance moves, every live performance sees Tonnon explain to his audience some vaguely recondite concept or story, of which he becomes the sole authoritarian figure for the night. 

It has become routine for Tonnon to narrate the tale of the Mataura Paper Mill, accompanied by an unreleased song titled “Mataura”. In recounting the plight of the tiny Southland town, Tonnon suddenly becomes something of a local doomsday preacher. 

The tragedy of this story is no farce.

The Tiwai Point Aluminium Smelter, near Bluff, is the only aluminium smelter in New Zealand. It was opened in 1971 and uses 13% of all the electricity in New Zealand. A byproduct of this smelting process is aluminium dross – basically a mass of solid impurities floating on the surface of molten aluminium.

Enter Taha International (later known as Taha Asia Pacific).

Bahrain-owned Taha International was contracted by Tiwai Aluminium Smelter to take its dross and extract usable aluminium for re-use at the smelter, the remaining byproduct then being processed as “ouvea premix”. The premix was to be converted into a phosphate fertiliser, an environmentally sustainable solution that offsets a fraction of the environmental degradation caused by aluminium smelting. 

Despite promises, the waste was never converted to fertiliser, because Taha suddenly went bankrupt. The company was liquidated in August of 2016, one day after their five-year contract with the smelter expired. Due to a convenient loophole in New Zealand company law, Taha was permitted to dump 35,000 tonnes of ouvea premix and leftover dross into three (potentially up to seven, there remains some uncertainty) Southland buildings and exit the country. All responsibility for the products then fell on local government and the Southland community. The former Mataura Paper Mill, which closed in 2000, is now filled with 10,000 bags of ouvea premix that holds no value and cannot be sold.

Here’s the doomsday situation. When ouvea premix becomes wet, it releases ammonia gas. If an entire building filled with the material becomes wet, it will release a gigantic corrosive ammonia cloud, with the potential to cause fourth-degree burns and eventually death by ammonia poisoning. If it catches fire, you can’t douse it with water to put the flames out. When Tonnon sings of the Mataura Paper Mill, he’s not talking a couple of bags of ouvea premix. He’s talking 10,000 tonnes of a substance described as “toxic under certain circumstances,” being stored near communities where children play on the streets and rivers run clean through townships. 

For the anarchists of the south, some have already attempted to deliberately sabotage stockpiles situated in Awarua. Tonnon’s face remains stoic, and he sings on.

The old paper mill backs onto the Mataura River, and fears of the river being poisoned are at an all-time high. The river supports breeding colonies of endangered black-billed gull and is a popular trout fishing venue during summer. Taha left no staff to build flood mitigation measures at the site, leaving stacks of premix sitting near the water's edge. Earlier this year Southland experienced heavy rainfall, rapidly rising rivers and extensive surface flooding. Official bodies held their breath, knowing the impending disaster is simply a matter of time. 

Earlier this year, the Tiwai Aluminium Smelter, local councils, landowners and the government agreed to pay a share of $4 million to ship the premix overseas for disposal, the cost for which Taha refuses to pay. The premix continues to lie dormant at the Mataura Paper Mill and both Liddell Street and Bond Street in Invercargill. The Southland community remains in danger, which one musician never lets his audience forget.

Anthonie continues to use his platform as a musician to keep the potential for New Zealand’s largest man-made environmental disaster relevant. May its relevance spread to the wider New Zealand conscience in due course, and may Tonnon’s music hold those responsible to account in lieu of formal justice. 

As for Mataura, the charming relic of post-industrial Southland, may your air remain pure, and your river forever run clean.

This article first appeared in Issue 21, 2018.
Posted 8:20pm Thursday 30th August 2018 by Waveney Russ.