School kids play in mud, metres from failed sewage plant

Video has been published on social media of school children playing in mud immediately downstream from the failed Shotover sewage plant and disposal field in November 2023.

The area involved is a public recreation reserve that is still open to the public – although warning signs were erected in November 2024 after Crux published our first articles on the sewage crisis. Some of the effluent discharged into the reserve has been measured by the Otago Regional Council at up to 9,000 times the safe or consented limit on specific dates in late 2023 and during 2024.

The recreation area is still open to the public in spite of continued sewage discharges

A parent, who does not want to be identified, shared the video with Crux and highlighted with a blue circle the exact location the video was recorded.

The exact video location marked in blue by a parent.

Crux has decided not to publish the full video or the name of the school involved in the supervised play/adventure session.

Our video screen grabs also have been selected so that the identity of the children is hidden. There is no evidence to support an assumption that mud and water was unsafe at the time the video was recorded but we do know that the disposal field, only 20 - 40 metres away was pooling and flooding at that time.

Just one month later (December 27 and 28, 2023) the ORC, responding to earlier reports of discharges into the recreation reserve, produced the following test results, based on the fact that the public health and safety - plus resource consent -  limit is 260 CFU's per 100 ml.

ORC water quality readings taken on December 27 and 28, 2023.

The flooded public reserve is still open to the public

The school did provide Crux with an unattributed statement that they said was not for publication - they also requested that we don't publish the video, which we have agreed to respect. Out of public interest we believe we need to share the main part of the school’s statement (below) and redacted images to indicate the potential public safety risk before warning signs we erected a year later. The sewage plant started to fail in 2021 when the first ORC abatement notice was issued.

Pollution warning signs and fences have now been left to decay and be ignored

Statement from school:

“We've not seen evidence of spill or contamination when we were previously in that space, and our Risk Assessment and Daily Safety Checks are very thorough.

“Like all residents and visitors in this district, we need safe and functional infrastructure. We also need ongoing accountability from local government (both QLDC and ORC), on all issues.”