Some images are seared into your memory.
For Napier City Council’s Cameron Burton, his confronting moment happened on February 5 while responding to a hydrochloric acid spill into the stormwater system and the nationally significant wildlife refuge Te Whanganui-a-Orotū/Ahuriri Estuary. (The estuary was formed by the 1931 earthquake, when uplift of between one and two metres exposed about 1300ha of the Ahuriri Lagoon.)
Burton, the environmental solutions manager, trudged from an industrial area, where the spill occurred, to a natural drain along the estuary’s mudflats, taking water samples - showing acid levels “of concern” - and coordinating sucker trucks, which ended up extracting 40,000 litres of acid-contaminated water.