Earlier this week, the district council announced issues around the plant’s performance which occurred during recent upgrade works. This resulted in some ponding of the disposal area, surface run-off from the site and total nitrogen within treated wastewater exceeding consent requirements.
District council property and infrastructure general manager Tony Avery said that while the situation was disappointing, the council was co-operating fully with the ORC and action was already being taken to address the issues.
"With the recent upgrade work now complete, and all three reactors operating as expected, we’re already seeing material improvements in the treated wastewater quality," Mr Avery said.
The district council would keep the community informed as it worked through issues.
Regional council Dunstan ward councillor Michael Laws, who lives near Cromwell, was critical of the regional council’s work on the matter. He said it had failed in its responsibilities of monitoring wastewater treatment plants back to 2016 and was still seriously deficient.
The Wānaka incident follows breaches at the district council’s Shotover treatment plant which has led to an application to discharge treated water into the Shotover River, diverting water within the bed of the river and disturbing the bed of the river to build a diversion channel.
The district council said the two issues were not related.
Cr Laws said the council decided to hook up Lake Hawea to the Wānaka scheme when they perhaps should have had separate schemes.
But there might be more to come, he said.
"At the moment, it’s got to be said that development schemes and plans are running well ahead of infrastructure. So in some ways, this is tip of the iceberg stuff.
"It could get very much worse before it gets better, if some of the housing developments go through as they are."
The district council was up against it.
"To be fair to the QLDC, they’ve been behind the eight ball for a long time. They’re dealing with tourism numbers and residential numbers that are well beyond the ability of their ratepayers to pay for it.
"It’s frankly time that there was a concerted regional lobby coming from both councils and from local members of Parliament to start to provide the infrastructure, particularly within the QLDC."
He said improving infrastructure was going to require a major lobbying effort at a national level, particularly in Wellington.
There were new mayors in the districts and new governance tables in key councils in the South, which meant fresh ideas and energy.
"It’s going to take members of Parliament, it’s going to take mayors, it’s going to take the regional council, it’s going to take chambers of commerce, it’s going to take developers. It’s going to take everybody to deal with it.
"Given that Queenstown is the flagship of New Zealand’s tourism industry, and tourism is so absolutely vital and critical to our economy, just not regional but national as well, it’s going to require some sort of national response."
Queenstown Lakes District Mayor John Glover could not be contacted.
