Crux commissions independent sewage tests

Crux has today commissioned an independent series of tests from an accredited testing lab on effluent being discharged from the QLDC's troubled Shotover treatment plant.

The decision follows the failure so far of the regulator, Otago Regional Council, to disclose their own test results from a site investigation and testing on November 19 - and subsequent dates.

Update Dec 3 - 4.00 pm.*** Only hours after we published this story ORC has emailed their raw discharge test data to us. It will take some time to analyse. It should not be this hard to get a public regulator to supply information. ***

Crux delivered three sets of samples today to international agency Eurofins, one of the world's leading independent environmental diagnostics companies.

Our samples will be analysed, using the same metrics as the ORC, by the Eurofins wastewater laboratory in Invercargill.

Our sample sites were:

Site 1: The discharge pipe at the southern end of the disposal field

Site 2: The discharge from treatment plant groundwater into the Kawarau River

Site 3: A control sample upstream on the Kawarau River, away from the discharge

It will take up to 2 days for the first results to come back from the lab and 6 - 7 days for the complete set of results.

We did notice that the samples taken from the disposal field discharge pipe this morning (Dec 3) contained a very large number of tiny living water fleas, potentially Daphnia, tiny crustaceans that filter feed, ingesting any small particles of detritus, algae or bacteria in their path.

Daphnia can be used to test waste water or as a method of reducing green algae, but are more commonly found when there is excessive organic activity in waste water.

Our own results will test for the same contaminants and metrics documented by the ORC as being above permitted consent levels in December 2023.

The ORC's December 2023 test results - Crux tests wil produce the same type of water quality data

Its not clear why both the QLDC and ORC won't either release their test details or tell us when they will be made public.

A number of engineers and experts have told Crux that the Shotover plant is experiencing a number of failures resulting in poor quality effluent being discharged, potentially for years, into the Kawarau River. Even the QLDC themselves admitted in a June 2024 workshop that the Shotover disposal field had failed and the "issues had been known about for some time."

The Kawarau River is the subject of a special status protected conservation order issued in 1997.

The ORC has issued the QLDC with two abatement notices and six infringement notices since 2021 with no obvious fix or improvement at the plant.

QLDC this year constructed a 3 metre emergency earth bank around the disposal field as it filled with partially treated effluuent.