QLDC hires new sewage consultants - refuses to reveal any details or cost

The new contract was signed on October 1, 2024.

Hidden on the Government contracts website last year, on June 12, 2024, was a short “Request for Quotations” from the Queenstown Lakes District Council.

This was the simple contract description:

“Queenstown Lakes District Council (QLDC) recently commenced the Shotover Wastewater Treatment Plan (WWTP) Disposal Field Alternative Discharge project which focuses on identifying, developing, consenting and constructing a new disposal solution for the treated effluent from the Shotover WWTP.

“The new disposal solution will replace the existing disposal field which is located on the Shotover Delta and is no longer performing as designed.

“As part of the development of a new disposal solution, QLDC would also like to investigate additional treatment enhancement options to improve the quality of the discharge (e.g. filtration) where this would have benefits for enabling alternative discharge techniques.

In other words “the existing disposal field is broken and we don’t know how to fix it – and we need cleaner effluent.”

A new contract was signed with global consultants GHD via their Christchurch office and wort started on October 1, 2024.