Mahurangi Oyster owner Jim Aitken says it was "upsetting" and "disorientating" to spend six months growing oysters only be be forced to bin them. Photo: Nick Monro
An Auckland oyster farmer says he's had to dump 60,000 oysters this week and thousands more will be binned for the next two weeks due to a major wastewater spill into the Mahurangi River.
Watercare and negotiators for oyster farmers north of Auckland have spent a second day in compensation talks after their farms were contaminated after a sewage leak, but they have yet to reach an agreement.
A fault at Watercare's Warkworth plant sent sewage overflowing into the Mahurangi River last week, meaning farmers cannot collect oysters for 28 days.
It is believed a power surge tripped the pumps at the plant, resulting in the wastewater being released.
The alert system also failed and Watercare has launched investigations into what went wrong.
Its chief executive has publicly apologised for the incident.
"We are extremely disappointed and sorry that this has happened, particularly for the impact it is having on the local oyster farmers, who now face a 28-day harvest closure," Watercare chief executive Jamie Sinclair said in a statement last week.
Jim Aitkin from Mahurangi Oysters said they had been fighting Watercare over constant contamination issues over the last seven years.
"It's just been this ongoing issue of constant sewage spills be it rainfall mixing with sewage water or if it's been power cuts causing dry water spells, it's just been this ongoing battle."
Aitken said he had had "to make the very difficult decision to start binning oysters".
"Quite frankly if I don't do it now I can't make room for next year's crop and the year after that so I'm having to bin thousands of oysters to make sure I have oysters available next year in case the ones I'm having to dump now could die anyway between now and next year."
It was upsetting and they had already gotten rid of 60,000 oysters and that was just in the first week that they decided they would have to start dumping them, he said.
"It's quite disorientating too to spend basically a year and a half growing these animals to have to suddenly bin them."
Aitken said he had to grade the oysters by hand because he did not have the funds to get the proper equipment in to do it.
He then got rid of those he determined would not survive.
A similar number of oysters may need to be dumped for the next two weeks, he said.
"Because it was too late, I was hoping to sell them this month, finally getting up and running again after just over a month being open and now we're closed for another month, possibly longer depending on the water test result."
Aitken said he was "pinching pennies and eating beans on toast for dinner" to try and survive financially.
"It's this thing of going well how long can you sit in the red, how long can you survive before you have to make a pretty pretty harsh, difficult decision.
"You know me and my family have spent the last five years working very very hard, investing huge sums of money into new farming technology and it could be all down the drain before you even have a chance to get anything out of it, get proof that it works."
Aitken said he had calculated that his company had lost nearly $250,000 in the last two months in lost sales alone.
Oyster farmers generally have an off season for the first four months of the year which was why they needed to make the most of end of year sales to get them through that period, he said.
"It's been a whole year of basically no income and we were really hoping to get this good deal that we've had to scrap and might not get back because our season will pretty much be over in December."
Aitken said he thought Watercare should be held accountable for the waste spills and provide compensation to those affected.
A short apology was not enough, he said.
"We actually need some support here, we're stuck in the mud, we're really in trouble now."
Watercare had already apologised to the farmers at the beginning of the year and promised to do better, but this proved there were some serious issues, Aitken said.
"There's some deeper issues going on that need some serious addressing because it seems to just keep happening, you know there wasn't a storm or anything."
Aitken said as far as he could see the latest issue was a systems failure on Watercare's part.
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