Issue #994

by Councillor Niki Gladding

The issues with the disposal field at Shotover Wastewater Treatment Plant are well known. In short, you should be able to walk across what is now a leaky pond – complete with ducks.

So, it was inevitable that regulator Otago Regional Council (ORC) would take enforcement action against operator Queenstown Lakes District Council (QLDC), and that began at the end of last year. Documents show that by January, QLDC staff had rejected the idea of fixing the field in favour dirtying our rivers. The reason? Not the risk of bird strike on aircraft, but cost.

Then on 20 March, just a couple of days after mediation between the two councils, QLDC staff told councillors the plan was to simply dump the Basin’s treated wastewater into the Shotover River. Not just some of it and not just as a temporary measure to fix the ‘broken’ field (as suggested by the ORC’s experts) but all of it for at least the next five years. That’s 12,000-22,000 cubic metres per day.

Normally, a decision like that requires consultation, and a full assessment of the options, risks, and costs. Most importantly, the elected council get to make the decision – and voters get to hold them accountable. But the Chief Executive has decided to avoid normal processes.

Councillors had no idea what was coming when they were sat down, in a public-excluded session and told of a three-pronged ‘emergency’ (amenity, health, and bird strike) that would allow the CE to dump wastewater into the river. The councillors were told they had no say and that in 3-7 days it would be done. They supplied no legal opinion, no evidence of an emergency, and no evidence that either the bird strike issue or the use of emergency powers were ‘before the court’. And if emergency powers were discussed in that context, they shouldn’t have been.

My instinct was that this was an opportunistic use of delegated power that would take away the rights of the community to have a say on something that is of huge significance – the health of our water. And I didn’t agree there were reasons to keep it from the community; just because QLDC says something is confidential doesn’t mean it is. The decision to ‘leak’ this when I did came down to time pressure, lack of information, and a sense of having been completely morally compromised.

QLDC’s legal argument seems shaky to me. The bird strike ‘emergency’ is their best bet, but the netting solution suggested by Queenstown Airport in its recent legal letter doesn’t support the council’s course of action. I don’t see how QLDC can lawfully rely on ‘emergency’ measures to solve issues that aren’t emergencies.

So, the risk of court action is real, our treatment infrastructure can’t yet be relied on, there are alternative solutions available, and the proposed five-year discharge is currently ‘unconsentable’. A rethink is needed.