How QLDC walked away from a powerful, environmental sewage solution - in 2021
The benefits were both environmental and financial.
Crux has obtained details of a powerful offer made to the QLDC in 2021 that had the potential not only to address problems at the Shotover sewage plant - but save money and the planet as well.
Alimentary Systems proposed to manage solid waste/sludge from the Shotover plant by combining it with green food waste to produce methane gas (ten times more than is needed to run the entire Shotover plant) and then use the resulting material as an effective fertiliser.
Instead QLDC continues to truck and dump dewatered sludge from the Shotover plant Queenstown to Winton in Southland at a cost that may be as much as $1,000 a ton.
The proposal to QLDC was to turn sewage waste into both energy and fertiliser.
QLDC was the first council to be approached by Alimentary who have since gone on the develop a powerful base of public and private funding - plus iwi support. Crux understands that key figures including Mike Theelen, Jim Boult and Simon Mason were all involved in rejecting the proposal, in spite of an offer to run a pilot project at the Shotover site.
The reasons give included QLDC having no desire to find a new solution and insisting on a competitive tender process from “established” suppliers using “proven” techniques.