Court orders QLDC to take extensive measures to fix the Shotover sewage plant

In an Environment Court decision released today Judge John Hassan has granted a wide-ranging sewage enforcement order against the Queenstown Lakes District Council.

The application for the enforcement order was lodged earlier this year by the Otago Regional Council following multiple failures over an extended period at the QLDC’s Shotover wastewater plant.

Crux first broke news of the council’s illegal discharge of partially treated effluent into local rivers in November 2024 with the QLDC’s CEO Mike Theelen denying our reports and said Crux had a “scant regard for the truth” in our sewage coverage. The council funded local newspaper the Mountain Scene also ignored the sewage crisis for months.

The QLDC secretly funded and built an $800,000 earth wall and discharge pipe in 2024. The wall failed within weeks and neither the wall or discharge pipe had resource consent from the ORC as regulator. The purpose of both the wall and the discharge pipe was to conceal the failure of the Shotover plant from the community.

Now the Environment Court has issued multiple measures that the QLDC must take to fix the sewage plant and discharge into local rivers.