Out now - The Friday Edition.

The Queenstown Lakes District Council says it won’t release details of any payments to sewage plant contractor Veolia as the information disclosure could deny them a fair trial in their legal battle with the Otago Regional Council (ORC).

The ORC has filed an application with the Environment Court for enforcement orders that would force QLDC to make over 20 different changes and improvements to the operation of the Shotover sewage plant.

The court documents raise new questions over QLDC’s apparent failure to operate the plant correctly. The ORC is claiming inadequate training, a failure to have spare parts available, poor operating methods, illegal sewage discharges and broken systems.

Read the full story in The Friday Edition.

Also in this Friday Edition:

• We examine mayor Glyn Lewers plan to introduce traffic congestion charges for the Queenstown CBD.

• First Drive: we traverse the new arterial “road to nowhere” in one minute and 11 seconds with the Crux meter on screen running from $0 to $128,000,000 (the construction cost) in just 670 metres. That’s $1.8 million per second.

• Crux talks to the two successful entrepreneurs, now with both public and private backing, who proposed an environmental cost-saving solution for the Shotover sewage plant in 2021. They were sent packing and told by the QLDC “we are not interested.”