Shotover Wastewater Treatment Plant in Queenstown. Photo: Supplied / Queenstown Lakes District Council
The deputy mayor of Queenstown Lakes is warning there may be no quick fix for its troubled Shotover Wastewater Treatment Plant.
The Otago Regional Council is taking the district council to Environment Court over repeated breaches of resource consents at the plant.
Two abatement notices and ten infringements have been issued since the start of 2024.
Regional council chief executive Richard Saunders said the council was seeking an enforcement order after a more than year-long investigation into the plant, which Queenstown Lakes District Council owns and operates.
The council's testing showed the discharges would not have an adverse effect on water quality in the Shotover River as they were well below the contact recreation guidelines, Saunders said.
"While tests have shown the discharges to be highly treated, we want (Queenstown Lakes District Council) to be compliant with its consent. It's up to the Environment Court to determine a decision on compliance.
"It's vitally important for the environment overall that consent holders achieve compliance with their consent conditions."
He described the investigation as the highest priority for the regional council.
The compliance issues mainly related to the performance of the plant's ground disposal field where the treated water from the plant was expected to soak through the ground, not pond, he said.
Queenstown Lakes deputy mayor Quentin Smith said he was not surprised about the enforcement order given the council had failed to meet consent conditions.
"We're not keeping up with the demand right across from all the 3Waters and transport related things but also the social infrastructure that's required - the playing fields, the sports courts ... libraries," he said.
"We're on the back foot and what we are seeing is we're going to face, particularly in transport, very significant declining levels of service over the next few years."
The problem would only get worse if the council continued to green light more developments so it needed to carefully plan for future growth, he said.
"The main issue here is one where, can we continue to exacerbate the problem in terms of supercharging or enabling the growth, the additional connections to be added to it?"
Even if did end up in front of the court, he said the council had few alternatives.
"If the court suddenly says 'you can't discharge', then we don't have any other options at this point in time so it's absolutely about setting a path forward and making sure that we get to the right outcome," he said.
He hoped the councils could work together to find a solution but said it would not happen overnight.
The council has long advocated for a regional visitor levy, which would alleviate some pressure and contribute to infrastructure costs.
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