A 13-year battle for Kingston to get a reticulated water and sewerage scheme shows no sign of ending.
Queenstown Lakes District Council's chief engineer Ulrich Glasner said no funding was allocated for a Kingston scheme in the council's draft long-term plan.
While there was money set aside to deal with a water scheme within five years, Mr Glasner's personal view was water and sewerage should be done simultaneously and that was not cost-effective now.
While the number of rateable properties in Kingston was comparative to Glenorchy, where a reticulated wastewater scheme was being advanced, there was a critical difference.
"The big disadvantage for the Kingston community is that they don't have, or the council has, no land available, so we have to buy land or lease land for a wastewater plant and disposal field.''
About 6.5ha would be needed.
That was deemed too great of a burden given it would be a user-pays system.
The Statistics New Zealand 2013 Census showed there were 240 rateable dwellings in Glenorchy, with six more under construction, compared to 213 in Kingston and none under construction.
A case for a scheme for Kingston was raised in 2003 when the Kingston 2020 plan was adopted in which provision of adequate infrastructure, especially reticulated water and sewage systems, was identified as a key issue.
A subsequent plan change in 2009 rezoned 88ha at Kingston from rural to a special zone with capacity for 700 more dwellings.
As part of the plan change, developer Kingston Village Ltd was obliged to install water and sewerage systems for new subdivisions, thereby paying for the basic infrastructure with the community required to meet some of the cost.
Mr Glasner said the scheme depended "on development'' not yet proceeding and so at the moment was "too expensive for the community''.
Kingston Community Association chairman Athol Elliott could not be reached to comment.
