Ongoing problems at Wanaka's $21 million Project Pure wastewater and sewage treatment network have left the Queenstown Lakes District Council wanting more from the beleaguered plant's builders.
The council is at loggerheads with Project Pure contractors United Group New Zealand Ltd, which finished construction on the wastewater and sewage network last year.
However, the scheme's key processing component - a $9.5 million treatment plant located near Wanaka airport - has been dogged by problems since an initial malfunction in January.
QLDC wastewater project manager Martin O'Malley has declined to sign off a "defect liability" certificate for the plant's design-and-build contractors, United.
The plant's "defect liability" period was extended until May 18 to allow United to address several concerns about the facility's ability to treat and process effluent following the January malfunction.
The QLDC still had five areas of concern about possible defects and the effectiveness of the plant to adequately ease those concerns, Mr O'Malley said.
When contacted by the Otago Daily Times yesterday, United Group's Project Pure manager, Peter Hogan, confirmed there were differences of opinion with the QLDC about the treatment plant.
The plant had been "operating extremely well in the past two months," and results from laboratory tests on its treated effluent were well within compliance guidelines.
"We're certainly working in a timely manner to reach an agreement with the council," Mr Hogan said.
Mr O'Malley described negotiations between the two parties as "strained". Primary among the QLDC's concerns were questions about the treatment plant's reliability and equipment.
A breakdown in January, less than three months into the plant's commissioning phase, left neighbouring properties threatened by effluent overflow.
Only one malfunction, out of three identified equipment faults, had been adequately addressed to the QLDC's standards, Mr O'Malley said.
Odour and noise were still an issue although a consultant's report was expected to resolve the concern over noise. Not enough time had passed for United to prove that odour problems had been resolved, he said.
The contractors were also not allowing "septage" [sludge taken from septic tanks] to be processed at the Project Pure plant. Instead, between five and 10 truckloads of septage a week were being taken to Queenstown to be processed at the Shotover River oxidation ponds, he said.
A $450,000 "retention" performance contract sum is being withheld from United by the QLDC until the plant has undergone a two-year operating phase period. United would receive $225,000 of this payment once the defect liability certificate was signed off by the QLDC, Mr O'Malley said.
Project Pure Project's 5 black marks:
• Questionable reliability of plant and equipment.
• Odour.
• Noise (awaiting contractor's study report).
• Inability to process "septage" (septic tank sludge).
• Unsuitable operator work space for plant overseers.
