Wastewater backup closes Cardrona

"Significant" financial impacts at Cardrona Alpine Resort have been accepted as an inevitable outcome, as the skifield presses on to reopen as soon as possible after wastewater backups shut the operation down yesterday.

Cardrona has suspended its operations to drain wastewater from a near-overflowing oxidation pond located beneath the skifield's main facilities.

Cardrona operations manager Gary Husband said wastewater from the pond was being pumped through a hose to fill up a convoy of six trucks operating continuously.

The trucks are hauling the wastewater to a disposal facility in Queenstown.

"We're doing as much as we can to decrease the level of the pond to ensure we can open again as quickly as possible," Mr Husband said.

Cardrona spokeswoman Nadia Ellis said she was not prepared to speculate about how much the closure and drainage operation at the skifield was costing.

"Of course there is a significant financial impact to us being closed. There is also the cost of transporting, disposing of, and reducing the level of water in the pond.

"We've accepted the costs as inevitable, but we have to take this course of action. Our priority is to reopen for our customers as soon as we can," she said.

The skifield's wastewater facilities have struggled to cope this winter as the combined affects of a surge in visitor numbers and warmer weather, rain, and an early snow melt have pushed levels at a containment pond higher and higher.

The Southland Health Board has been told about the drainage operation at the pond.

Closing the skifield ensured there was no continuation of grey-water flows into the wastewater pond.

Two large storage tanks, capable of holding 120,000 litres were being brought from Christchurch to provide extra capacity for wastewater.

Otago Regional Council resource management director Dr Selva Selvarajah said Cardrona's course of action was "the right one" to avoid the risk of any potential environmental contamination.

Cardrona has a resource consent to discharge wastewater to ground during the "dry, summer" period, he said.

"If they are managing a risk of overflow by transporting the [wastewater] off-site, then that is fine. As long as there is no spill, or risk of a spill, they are complying with their consent."

Cardrona hopes to be operational by Friday, although the reopening of the skifield was contingent upon the drainage operation reducing the oxidation pond to a satisfactory level, Ms Ellis said.