Councillors remain in the dark about how bad Wānaka’s wastewater woes are, a former whistleblower says.
Queenstown Lakes district councillor Niki Gladding, of the Wānaka-Upper Clutha Ward, rose to prominence earlier this year when she raised the alarm about the Queenstown Lakes District Council’s (QLDC) plans to discharge treated wastewater directly into the Shotover River to bypass the Shotover wastewater treatment plant’s failing disposal fields.
Now, as Wānaka’s Project Pure wastewater plant is faced with two abatement notices from the Otago Regional Council (ORC), Cr Gladding said despite significant differences in the issues, there were notable similarities in the council’s response.
Issues at the Shotover plant built up over years, while Wānaka’s treatment plant had appeared to run “reasonably well”.
Wānaka’s treatment plant ran into trouble when one of three reactors at the plant was offline for maintenance.
However, Cr Gladding said questions remained about the performance issues at Wānaka’s plant.
“We still don’t know how bad the situation is,” she said. “We haven’t had an update on whether the [disposal] fields need remediation, whether we need new fields — if they need remediation, how much that’s going to cost.
“We don’t have those details.
“And I guess this happened initially back in August, and we’re still sort of running blind.
“So there’s a similarity with Shotover, in that we don’t probably have all the details that we should have at this point.”
She said she did not know either whether there was sufficient redundancy in place in Wānaka, or whether the filtration system in use was overwhelmed when the plant breached its consent.
Cr Gladding said the episode called for a “good strategic look” at how wastewater was being delivered across the district.
“What are the big risks? How are we managing them? Is our infrastructure able to cope? And are the people who are managing the system able to cope?”
Queenstown Lakes Deputy Mayor Quentin Smith said any breach of consents at a wastewater treatment plant were disappointing.
The QLDC was trying to understand why there wasn’t sufficient redundancy in the Wānaka plant and whether plans to add a fourth reactor at the plant needed to be brought forward, Cr Smith said.
While some work was under way to improve how the system handled peak loads, he too said there was a need to “take a step back” and look into whether the council had properly balanced the risks it faced, or whether work plans in place were programmed for the appropriate times to address those risks.
“Fundamentally it [the plant] is under pressure because of the rate of growth in our district, and it will continue to be under pressure.
“We’re continuing to invest an enormous amount of money in that.
“We’ve just put about $20million into the third [reactor] at Project Pure, and we’re spending about more than $50million on the Upper Clutha Conveyancing project at the moment — and they all contribute to an upgrade and an increase in capacity in our network.
“So, you know, we can’t argue that we’re not investing and responding.
“The question is whether it’s fast enough and we’re keeping up, and whether that will continue to keep up.”
A QLDC spokesman said staff were working to address the operational issues at the plant, and recognised the strong public interest in water services.
“As such we will keep councillors and the wider community informed of progress,” he said.
QLDC’s application to discharge treated wastewater effluent directly into the Shotover River will be heard in the Environment Court.
The ORC abatement notice for the Wānaka plant gives the QLDC until August 30 next year to make the effluent it discharges compliant.
