Environmental

LDE specialises in providing comprehensive environmental consulting services, with a strong focus on land contamination remediation. With over 20-years of experience, we are dedicated to helping clients navigate the complexities of land contamination, ensuring the protection of human health, the environment, and regulatory compliance.

Phase I & II Environmental Site Assessments (ESAs)

Remediation Design & Implementation

Risk Assessment & Management

Regulatory Compliance & Reporting

Post-Remediation Monitoring & Maintenance

LDE provides water contamination and freshwater ecology capabilities spanning surface water and groundwater investigations, contaminant discharge management, and ecological assessment against ANZECC guidelines.

Supporting material for resource management applications

Surface water and groundwater quality investigations

Stormwater and wastewater - contaminant discharge management

Stormwater, wastewater, and groundwater contaminant assessment of effects

Compliance Monitoring for Groundwater, Stormwater, Industrial and Trade Waste

Stormwater Diversion and Discharge Consents

Habitat and physical characteristics

Macrophytes

Periphyton Cover

Aquatic macroinvertebrates

Fish from eDNA analysis

Water quality assessment against ANZECC water quality guidelines

Sediment quality assessment against ANZECC sediment quality guidelines

LDE is a trusted provider of environmental compliance monitoring services, dedicated to helping businesses and organisations meet and exceed environmental regulations. With extensive experience across various industries, we deliver tailored, cost-effective solutions that ensure environmental compliance while minimising risk and promoting sustainability.

Environmental compliance audits and assessments

Air quality monitoring

Water quality monitoring

Waste management and hazardous materials compliance

Regulatory reporting and documentation

Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA) and consent support

Training and education

LDE provides advanced geospatial services designed to support environmental planning, assessment, and management. Our team of GIS professionals, geospatial analysts, and environmental scientists uses cutting-edge technologies to provide accurate, data-driven solutions for clients across various sectors.

Geospatial data collection and mapping

GIS analysis and modelling

Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs)

Land-Use Planning and Zoning Analysis

Environmental monitoring and management

Habitat and biodiversity mapping

Custom GIS solutions and software development

LDE specialises in the assessment, management, and mitigation of acid sulphate soils (ASS) - soils containing iron sulphides that, when disturbed, can release sulphuric acid, leading to severe environmental degradation.

Acid sulphate soil (ASS) identification and assessment

Acid sulphate soil management plans

Acid sulphate soil monitoring and treatment

Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs)

Client education and capacity building

LDE is a leading provider of advisory services for environmental practices, with a specialised focus on carbon footprint assessments and management. As organisations and governments face increasing pressure to reduce their environmental impact, we offer comprehensive consulting services to help clients measure, manage, and mitigate their carbon emissions.

Carbon footprint assessment

Carbon reduction strategy development

Carbon management and reduction implementation

Sustainability reporting and disclosure

Regulatory compliance and risk management

Employee engagement and education

Our environmental work is grounded in New Zealand sites, New Zealand soils and New Zealand consenting. Most of it starts the same way: somebody needs to know whether a piece of land is fit for what is planned for it, what the risk actually is, and what it will take to satisfy the council.

Recent work includes contaminated land assessments on a former industrial site at Hastings, preliminary and detailed site investigations on former horticultural land in Hawke’s Bay, a detailed site investigation at Gisborne, and environmental compliance monitoring and freshwater ecology for Waiū Dairy at Kawerau in the Bay of Plenty. We have also carried out contamination assessment supporting the redevelopment of Tolaga Bay Area School, and hydrocarbon and dairy effluent investigations on rural and industrial sites.

Contaminated land assessments, Hastings

Preliminary and detailed site investigations on former horticultural land, Hawke’s Bay

Detailed site investigation, Gisborne

Environmental compliance monitoring and freshwater ecology, Waiū Dairy, Kawerau

Contamination assessment supporting the Tolaga Bay Area School redevelopment

Hydrocarbon and dairy effluent investigations on rural and industrial sites

Contaminated land is handled inside this service rather than as a separate offering, so one team carries a site from the desktop review through sampling, risk assessment and remediation design to validation and the reporting a council needs before it will close a consent out. We scope the investigation to the decision being made. A straightforward residential subdivision should not attract the programme a former industrial or horticultural site needs, and we will say so early rather than bill for certainty nobody asked for.

Desktop review and preliminary site investigation

Detailed site investigation, sampling and laboratory programmes

Human health and environmental risk assessment

Remediation options, design and site management plans

Validation sampling and closure reporting for council

Contaminated land work runs on a regulatory clock. A preliminary site investigation that misses a former land use costs far more at the consent stage than it ever saved at the start, and the cost lands on the programme as much as the budget.

Our environmental consultants are scientists and engineers sitting in the same team as the geotechnical engineers, so one mobilisation can cover both and a single consultant carries the site knowledge from screening through to sign-off. You brief the site once.

Earthworks on a consented site carry conditions, and erosion and sediment control is usually the first of them to be audited. We design the control measures alongside the earthworks rather than after them, because a plan that ignores the staging is a plan the contractor cannot actually follow.

Soil testing sits in the same workflow. Where a site’s history points to fill of unknown origin, that can include asbestos in soil, and the sampling plan is written to answer the question the consent actually asks.

The trigger is regulatory, not discretionary. Land is assessed under the Resource Management (National Environmental Standard for Assessing and Managing Contaminants in Soil to Protect Human Health) Regulations 2011, usually shortened to the NES for contaminated soil, which came into force on 1 January 2012 under section 43 of the Resource Management Act 1991.

It bites when a site is subdivided, changed in use, disturbed, or has soil removed, and the question it turns on is whether an activity on the Hazardous Activities and Industries List has more likely than not taken place there. That list, the HAIL, is broader than people expect: orchards and market gardens with historic spray use, sheep dips, fuel storage, timber treatment, workshops, and closed rubbish tips are all on it, which is why a rural lifestyle block is as likely to need assessment as an industrial yard.

Two further points decide how much work follows. Results are assessed against the intended land use, so the same soil can be acceptable under a car park and not under a house with a vegetable garden. And the scope of a preliminary and a detailed site investigation is set by the Ministry for the Environment Contaminated Land Management Guidelines rather than by preference, which is what makes a report defensible to a council years later.