Queenstown Lakes District Council has pushed on with an “emergency powers” proposal to discharge 12 million litres of treated wastewater into the Shotover River daily.
The move comes after a concerned Queenstown councillor revealed the confidential plan after a behind closed doors workshop last Thursday.
The Otago Regional Council confirmed to 1News it was today formally “notified by QLDC that they are considering the use of emergency works provisions under the Resource Management Act”.
Around 75 residents protested against the council proposal yesterday along the Shotover River Bridge.
One protester told 1News the move was a “disgrace”.
At a media conference, QLDC’s property and infrastructure general manager Tony Avery said: “We’re not talking about untreated human effluent here, we’re talking about highly treated effluent.”
“My understanding is that it’ll be undetectable,” he said.
Avery said it was not “talking about long-term effects” but the emergency powers could be in place for around five years while the council confirmed a plan for a new disposal solution.
The council moves came after a failed disposal field, built in 2019, suffered issues two years in.
Avery said: “Clearly we’ve been looking at this for some time now.”
“The team’s been looking at how we try and get the disposal field to operate successfully. That’s involved a series of bits of work to try and get it operating but all of those have proved unsuccessful.”
Last September, the council set up a pipe to get rid of some of the treated effluent the site has struggled to deal with.
The regional council has already taken action against Queenstown council through abatement and enforcement notices and, more recently, the Environment Court.
Council infrastructure operations manager Simon Mason said: “There has been periodic spillage from the site, but it has increased all the time.”
1News asked whether that work was consented and allowed. Mason said: “No, that is contrary to the consent.”
Emergency powers a last resort
The QLDC turned to the emergency powers under the RMA as a last resort.
Avery said: “There is nothing in front of us that we can do with the current disposal field that we’ll bring it back online so we are faced with the reality of having to deal with that in some other manner.”
The wastewater treatment plant is located below Queenstown Airport and alongside the Shotover River and nearby Kawarau River.
While the disposal field is a problem, the increase in the number of birds ponding has also sparked the council to call for emergency powers to reduce the risk of bird strike on planes.
When asked if other options had been explored including netting the field to keep birds out, council said it was not an option.
When asked if the emergency powers could have been implemented in September, Mason said: “the emergency works provisions weren’t available to us based on the amenity impact of the current non-compliance.”
“And it was predominantly the change in aviation safety risk that has triggered our consideration of the emergency works provisions.”
Cr Niki Gladding, who blew the whistle on the secret plans, told 1News outside the wastewater treatment plant that council should go back to the drawing board.
“You’re just gonna need to take a normal consenting path, suck it up, do the right thing, do the test, put the right infrastructure in place, and get a solution that doesn’t have a negative impact on the environment. That’s it.”
But council wants to act now and does not have time to wait.
“If we apply for resource consent, which we’ll be doing, by the time we get through a resource consent process that might be a year, 18 months, two years away.”
‘I would happily have my children swimming there’
When asked if he would swim in the river now, Mason told journalists “I would happily have my children swimming there”.
But some of the information released today has not satisfied some in the community.
Protest organiser and Queenstown Community Action spokesperson Nikki Macfarlane told 1News: “Stop and take a breath… I think they have to do some work on communicating better with the community to build that trust.”
Mason added: “we are really open to being as transparent as we need to be to give the community confidence and as I pointed out before, we will be doing extensive additional ecological monitoring within the river environments to provide ourselves and the community with confidence that this action is not having adverse effects.”
It is not just protesters who have raised concerns.
Neighbours, Central Otago District Council said it was concerned about the plan but it understand it should not have an impact on its drinking water supply downstream, as long as the discharge is completed correctly.
The Otago Regional Council said it takes samples from the river once a week and Queenstown’s council is required to sample its discharge too.
