A six-year project costing $4.8 million to upgrade Waitaki District Council rural water schemes to meet drinking water standards will not get any financial help from the Government's revamped subsidy scheme.
The council is planning to upgrade 21 urban and rural water schemes and has started on the programme with the Lower Waitaki scheme already completed, and is working on a new 5.5km pipeline from the Oamaru water treatment plant to the Weston reservoir in a $1.2 million project to upgrade the Weston and Enfield supplies.
It also hopes this financial year to start a $1.8 million upgrade of the Palmerston, Dunback and Goodwood water supplies by combining them and using one treatment plant.
Other schemes on the timetable this financial year are Hampden-Moeraki and Otematata.
The Government has put up funding of $10 million a year to assist communities upgrading water supplies.
However, Ministry of Health criteria rule out any schemes in the Waitaki district receiving a subsidy, the council's assets group manager Neil Jorgensen said.
''The news is disappointing but not unexpected. The new criteria will have no impact on Waitaki ratepayers because budgets were drawn up with no subsidy funding,'' he said.
In order to qualify for a subsidy, communities must have fewer than 5000 people and have a deprivation index higher than seven - a deprivation index of 10 is the least socially and materially well off.
The highest deprivation index of any Waitaki community expecting to upgrade their water supply was six.
Work to upgrade rural water supplies across the district would continue as planned.
