Protesters on Wednesday calling on the council to scrap plans to discharge sewage into the river. Photo: RNZ / Tess Brunton
A water protection group is weighing seeking an injunction to prevent Queenstown Lakes District Council from discharging treated sewage into the Shotover River.
The council is planning to use emergency powers in order to pump 12,000 cubic metres of wastewater into the river daily.
That could begin any day.
Protesters on Wednesday picketed the wastewater plant, calling on the council to scrap plans to discharge sewage into the river.
The treated sewage is currently discharged on to land adjacent to the river, but the council said it needed to act to address uncontrolled discharges and a rising bird strike risk at the neighbouring Queenstown Airport.
However, the council was confident water quality would not be impacted.
Aotearoa Water Action had now sent a letter to the council calling for more information.
Member of Aotearoa Water Action as well as the Queenstown Lakes district councillor who revealed the council's plans, Niki Gladding, said it was possible the group might seek an injunction to prevent the council from discharging the sewage to the Shotover River.
"The lawyer's letter requests some information from the council," Gladding said.
"At this point, there's not a lot of information out there about council's decision-making, the nature of the emergencies, why they are emergencies, and when they first became emergencies. So, there's a lot of information we need to get before taking steps.
"It may be that we can't stop the initial discharge, it may be that we take some action afterwards."
Gladding suspected the council would go ahead with the discharging and it could start before the group took action.
"That could be the case, hopefully not, but that could be the case," she said.
"My message to the chief executive would be please don't do this, this affects so many people and we just don't have the information that we need to make a good call on this. And there are options available for addressing the problems that they've raised in public.
"We could continue to discharge to land and it would be the safest option because at this point, there is no redundancy in that treatment system.
"We are still using an oxidation pond and there are no calamity basins, and you've got to ask the question when we had this massive treatment plant failure not so long ago and we were discharging awful nutrient levels, would we have wanted to be discharging to water at that point? And the answer is obviously no, so what they're doing is risky."
Member of Aotearoa Water Action as well as the Queenstown Lakes district councillor Niki Gladding. Photo: Facebook/Niki Gladding
The Queenstown Lakes District Council confirmed it received Aotearoa Water Action's letter last night.
"It will respond to AWA's lawyers when it is in a position to do so and has nothing further to add at this stage," a spokesperson said.
Debris and vegetation needed to be removed from the existing channel to allow the discharges, the council said.
"This has commenced and is expected to be completed early next week. The discharge will be changed over to this channel once the preparation work is complete."
Work on a resource consent had also begun.
Mayor says wastewater only two percent of flow into Shotover
Queenstown Lakes District Council Mayor Glyn Lewers said there was an issue with the way the treated sewage was currently pumped.
"It's meant to dispose over free draining gravels and then go into the water body through the land, what we have found is that the gravels have blinded up with natural silts from the flow of the river, but also with the mix of the old oxidation ponds. There's a bit of biological activity that's sort of bound up the gravels as well and so that's reduced the soakage capacity, or soakage efficacy of the bed itself - and so now we're getting ponding."
It was also now seeping outside the fenced boundary of the disposal field, he said.
He was adamant that any wastewater pumped into the Shotover River would be a drop in the bucket.
The wastewater treatment plant was less than 10-years-old which meant that the wastewater was very highly treated and would go through UV treatment at the end before going into the river, he said.
"Let's put this into context, 12,000 cubic metres [of treated waste water] per day into a Shotover River that's currently running at 900,000 cubic metres a day. It's two percent of the flow."
That goes down to one percent once it reaches the Kawarau River, he said.
Lewers said it was a predicament he did not want to be in.
"I acknowledge the environmental concerns and we take those very very seriously, there'll be monitoring up and down stream of the disposal point."
The Otago Regional Council had now been advised of the Queenstown Lakes District Council's plans, after last week telling RNZ they had not been notified.
"We were formally informed yesterday that QLDC were considering the use of emergency powers under the Resource Management Act due to the risk of aircraft related bird strike," Otago Regional Council chief executive Richard Saunders said.
"This is a decision for them to make as the operators of the treatment plant. The Act requires formal notification of the activity to be made within seven days of it occurring and a resource consent application to be lodged within 20 working days of the emergency activity commencing. ORC staff will assess the activity as part of this process.
"ORC has sought an enforcement order from the environment court to address current compliance issues at the treatment plant. That process is ongoing. ORC has continued to monitor the discharge from the treatment plant to ensure it remains of a high quality."
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