Queenstown and its surrounding towns are well-known for their scenic beauty, locally and globally.
Regardless of the season, the Queenstown-Lakes district is a tourist mecca with an estimated 60,000-70,000 tourists per day. It is also a developers’ and investors’ paradise: it is one of the fastest growing regions in New Zealand and its current population of 50,000 was unthinkable in 2001, when it was 17,850. At this rate of growth, there is no doubt it will outgrow Dunedin in the coming years.
As it experiences such unprecedented growth, growing pains are inevitable. Long-term planning for the district is not just providing for housing, commercial opportunities, roading and Three Waters.
Fast-growing towns with enormous potential must endure sensible, painful and radical changes to strategically position and grow their key infrastructures, in order to avoid sustained and long-term pains.
It goes without saying within the past decade, Queenstown wastewater treatment and discharge issues have already exceeded the acute and chronic pain thresholds for the district, region and its people.
The "pain source" in question is in full view for the tourists entering Queenstown, just past the Shotover Bridge, the gateway to Queenstown from the north — not a warm welcome to one of the most special and attractive places on earth.
Despite the multimillion-dollar wastewater treatment plant upgrade, the stubborn ponds, which have been in existence since the 1970s, are still in view of the tourists and treating 20% of the raw wastewater.
Apparently, the community is stuck with ponds forever, because there is a council plan to upgrade and retain it as a "calamity pond".
The above step clearly signals more failures of the upgraded treatment plant and the lack of confidence by the district council in the upgraded system, which is hardly comforting to the ratepayers.
The Queenstown treatment pond discharge to Shotover River predated the Kawarau Water Conservation Order in 1997 under the Resource Management Act (RMA).
The order recognised the Dart, Rees, Shotover and Kawarau Rivers, among other rivers in the Wakatipu catchment and Lake Wakatipu itself, as having outstanding amenity and intrinsic values which deserved protection.
While the order provided exemptions for lawful discharges which existed at the time, they were not in perpetuity, since re-permitting must be at the discretion of the regional council.
Judging by what the district council has been enduring in the past decade and in hindsight, ideally the entire Shotover wastewater treatment plant should have been decommissioned and relocated from the current location to a new site fitted with a newly built modern treatment plant.
Is it still too late, given more upgrades are planned at a cost of $70 million while the already upgraded plant has been performing poorly?
The above cost is in addition to the recent estimates of $40m-$200m on future land disposal options.
The most expensive land disposal option has been discharging in and around the airport, but fear of bird strikes became an issue, which triggered the local council to evoke emergency discharge under the RMA.
The other option is to discharge to a kilometre-long constructed wetland within the Shotover Delta. My extensive study of such wetlands indicates they are a proven-failed system to treat wastewater.
The remaining land discharge options indicate relocating the discharge to Frankton Flats with bore or soak-hole discharges at $70m.
As the Wakatipu Basin, Arrowtown, Hayes, Jacks Point, Hanley Farm and Ladies Miles continue to grow, which requires further sewerage reticulation, why convey sewage wastewater to Shotover Delta, treat and pipe back to Frankton Flats? Why not relocate the entire plant and the discharge to a new remote location, well away from the costly and busy Frankton Flats?
There is a lot of misinformation on the catchment in question.
The E. coli requirement for Shotover and Kawarau Rivers under the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management 2020 is median 130 E. coli per 100ml, not 540 E. coli per 100ml, which is only allowed in 5% of the water samples.
Typically, in such rivers, background faecal bacteria levels are only elevated 5%-10% of the time.
Judging by the district council’s own April 2025 upstream water quality tests for the Shotover and Kawarau Rivers, they had 19-20 and 17-57 E. coli per 100ml, respectively.
Council web information such as " ... approximately there are 200 facilities discharging to water ... " and information comparing the daily discharge volume to river flows with Olympic size swimming pools is neither comforting nor useful, since such messages imply the district and its unique RMA-protected headwaters environment must be treated like the polluted or non-headwaters catchments in the country.
The combined treatment by the unreliable ponds and the inconsistently performing new activated sludge plant, and the resulting discharge quality or quantity, will not be consistent for the regional council to grant an interim consent under conditions, let alone monitor for compliance.
Even if the regional authority could complete the consent process, the environmental outcomes might remain unchanged, despite wasting the community’s money on consultants and the hearing commissioners on a publicly notified consent.
If so, what is the way out?
The best way forward for both councils, which represent the same ratepayers, is to collectively consider a cost-effective and outcome-based solution.
One such solution is for the district council to withdraw the application and the regional council to serve an abatement notice to enable the district council to find an alternative solution to the current emergency discharge within a mutually agreed and realistic timeframe.
The realistic solutions are netting the disposal area to avoid birds or using bird-scaring devices or converting the existing disposal area into an overland flow system without wastewater ponding.
The regional council has been extremely patient in its regulatory actions to date.
Regulatory actions are effective if they result in desired outcomes for our community or the environment.
The best outcome for the ratepayers is both councils working collaboratively for a cost effective short- to medium-term solution and proactively engaging on long-term solutions, including a well-planned staged removal of the wastewater treatment plant from the current site to a well-investigated and suitable long-term site.
■Dr Selva Selvarajah is a consultant specialising in wastewater, water quality and the RMA.
