Sewage crisis: Brad Pitt abandons Queenstown river shoot

Superstar Brad Pitt has abandoned plans to shoot a Queenstown river sequence for his new movie, Heart of the Beast, over what some crew members say are fears over local sewage pollution.

Multiple sources have spoken to Crux this week but all are covered by an industry standard Non Disclosure agreement.

We understand that a planned Kawarau River sequence will now be shot in an Auckland production facility water tank.

Crux has been told that some production staff carried out their own water quality tests, while other sources say that Pitt himself had concerns over the depth of the river water.

• The Kawarau River near Queenstown - fears of pollution from a failing sewage plant.

The reported Auckland plan would also allow multiple takes whereas the river shoot carried risks that could be linked to either water pollution, weather or other environmental factors.

Queenstown’s Shotover wastewater treatment plant has been plagued by problems and breakdowns since 2021 and is now the subject of an Otago Regional Council Environment Court enforcement order application that seeks to force the Queenstown Lakes District Council (QLDC) to stop discharging non-consented levels of sewage into the Kawarau and Shotover Rivers.

On March 31st this year the QLDC declared a sewage emergency, due to the claimed risk of bird strikes at the local airport, and started discharging treated sewage direct into local rivers. The council says extra bird numbers were linked to the sewage discharges.

• Queenstown’s “highly treated” effluent is now directly discharged into local rivers through what locals call “an open sewer.”

The council claims that the new direct discharge is highly treated but their own test samples on March 31st went missing for 24 hours before being submitted to independent lab Eurofins. The QLDC sample proved clean but a test by Crux on March 31st using the same lab produced a result that was double the consented limit.

The regulator, the Otago Regional Council, has recently recorded illegal sewage discharges up to 9,000 times the consented levels from the troubled Queenstown plant.

The council currently has no plan as to how to fix the various sewage problems that are also linked to over 6,000 planned new fast track homes and a population that is growing at 8 per cent per year.

• Queenstown’s illegal sewage discharges have been occurring since 2021

Queenstown is seen as New Zealand’s most popular tourist destination with around 3 million annual visitors attracted by marketing that features “clean and green” environmental standards.

Queenstown’s resident population of around 30,000 people have expressed increasing concern over the cost of infrastructure to support the very large visitor numbers and has accused the local council of being more property development and business focussed - rather than looking after the environment and the needs of ratepayers.

The Crux investigation into the Queenstown sewage crisis can be accessed here.