Queenstown's sewage plant heading for nightmare scenario

There’s increasing evidence that Veolia, the $45 billion French international water and waste giant, has effectively walked away from trying to manage the QLDC’s non-functioning Shotover sewage plant.

Crux has reported extensively on the QLDC’s illegal dumping of partially treated effluent into the Shotover and Kawarau rivers for at least the past five years. The council has ignored two abatement notices and six infringement notices from the regulator, the Otago Regional Council. So far there’s been no prosecution.

The problems centre on the wastewater plant’s disposal field. The field has never worked properly due to a combination of poor design and poor maintenance. The QLDC’s resource consent requires that fully treated effluent only be discharged into the land directly underneath the disposal field.

Instead, its being discharged, partially treated, from an overflow pipe, through a recreation reserve, into the Kawarau River often at levels hundreds of times greater than public health limits.

So far, the QLDC has either denied the problem exists or says that it is already being fixed. Neither statement appears to be true.

Crux has ben speaking with many of the engineers, consultants and contractors who built and run the plant. They all agree that the QLDC does not have the necessary knowledge or project management skills to run the plant. Instead, the council has relied on a string of disconnected third party consultants who have been paid tens of millions of dollars only to make the problems worse.

It's turned into a problem that Crux believes is not only an environmental crime but a financial meltdown that could cost the QLDC ratepayers well in excess of $200 million.

The real shock is that we know of at least four occasions when council managers were told of detailed mitigation measures, but decided to ignore that advice and literally dig a deeper hole for themselves and local ratepayers.

As recently as January 2024, just 12 months ago, an expert with advanced knowledge of the plant was hired by QLDC - in parallel with the council’s Veolia contract. He produced good results and strong progress in preventing the 100% failure of the disposal field.

At the same time (January 15, 2024) Crux published footage of effluent flowing from one of the main oxidation ponds into the Shotover River. QLDC said this was due to heavy rain and that the effluent had not reached the river. We now believe a Veolia contractor may have caused this situation by turning off a vital pump in the nearby UV filtration building. There’s no doubt that the sewage reached the Shotover River.