Queenstown council declares a new sewage failure - more details of what could be a half a billion dollar meltdown

The sewage solution that QLDC refused to pay for

Because of high levels of public interest this article is published without a paywall - thanks to our paid subscribers for making our work possible.

• Queenstown Lakes District Council informed the regulator Otago Regional Council last week of an ongoing “Crusting Event” that indicates a serious malfunction of the main Shotover wastewater plant (see video below). QLDC councillors have not been informed. The deputy mayor has called for a halt to all commercial and residential development until the long-failing plant can be fixed.

• At the same time the QLDC told Crux that there was no sewage malfunction and council CEO Mike Theelen said we had “scant regard for the truth” in our reporting. Photographic evidence from Crux was ignored.

• A new investigative journalism tool from the Google News Initiative, Pinpoint, has allowed Crux to analyse over 21 legal documents filed with the Environment Court by the Otago Regional Council. The initial results in our story are more than significant and suggest a five year sewage cover up by the QLDC.

  This video was recorded today at the Shotover Plant. Apart from the well-documented failure of the disposal field since 2021, with no fix, it now appears that since December 2023 the main plant has been unstable and has in recent weeks come closer to total shutdown. The rectangular tanks (on the right) initially process raw sewage and the circular tank, or clarifier, in the video (to the left) is supposed to contain liquid “the colour of tea” with most solids removed. Over the past two weeks we have recorded the circular tank gradually solidifying, or crusting, to the point where the processing of sewage is no longer effective - putting extra load onto the already broken disposal field.

• Crux video, Friday, February 28th, 2025 - the crusting of the circular tank has worsened every day for the past two weeks. But QLDC deny the fact and say the tank contents are fine.

There is increasing evidence that quite apart from the catastrophic failure of the disposal field, the main plant is also on the brink of total failure. The failure of the entire sewage plant, especially if complex, time consuming and expensive fixes are forced by the Environment Court, would be enough to stop hundreds of millions of dollars of fast tracked development - including 6,000 new houses and numerous commercial projects. The time scale waiting for a fix could be up to five years.

The regulator, ORC issued the following statement to Crux this afternoon.

“ORC were notified about floating solids on the clarifier last week. ORC staff are working to understand any risks to compliance associated with this. Questions about operational issues around the plant should be sent to QLDC. ORC staff have been on site this week and last week as part of the continued monitoring of the site. Samples were taken last week (Wed 19 Feb) and ORC is waiting for the results of the samples.”

QLDC, in line with recent practice, have missed our deadline to comment or answer our questions. (See their late response further down.)

They did however answer one question put to them by us earlier this week. In October 2024 they hired global consultancy GHD to find a potential fix for the sewage plant. Progress on that work, 5 months later, has not been disclosed by QLDC but they did tell us the contract price so far - $1,325,300.

Global consultancy BECA has already been paid for a similar study in 2023 with none of the advice apparently taken up by the council. The BECA report painted a picture of near total failure - with up to a five year fix - if a fix was possible at all.

Crux has been speaking this week with the chair (councillor Gavin Bartlett) and deputy chair (councillor Niki Gladding) of the council’s Infrastructure Committee and it appears they, along with Crux, feel that all of the facts have not yet been shared with them by council managers. And that’s putting it politely.

They certainly can’t tell us who at the council authorised an illegal wall to be built around the flooded disposal field in May 2024 - at a reported cost of $800,000 - and where the money came from.

It would be logical to believe that the council’s Infrastructure Committee would have had to make such a decision - or at the very least be told that the CEO or another senior manager had made the decision for them.

• The 2 kilometre fenced wall around the Shotover disposal field - it is supposed to be dry and flat. Not flooded and raised.

Enter Pinpoint- from the Google News Initiative.

The 21 legal affidavits from the ORC filed with the Environment Court make for formidable reading. So far we’ve picked out the occasional nuggets but a systemic analysis of the documents could take weeks or even months.

In partnership with the Google News Initiative we’ve uploaded all 21 documents to their investigative journalism tool Pinpoint this week. Within hours we could start to assemble a timeline of the sewage plant failure and see how the QLDC has failed to address or fix multiple problems that in most cases seem preventable.

Most alarming is the experience of ORC investigators who keep discovering failures that by law they are supposed to have been told about.

The two kilometre disposal field wall is just one example.

Pinpoint identified one meeting between ORC investigators and QLDC staff where it seemed like big (i.e. elected councillor/mayoral/community type) decisions were being made on the ground by unnamed staff with no clear mandate or authority.

The Google software found this exchange where the ORC had a meeting with unnamed council officials who are recorded as deciding how ratepayer money should be spent. The Affidavit is from an ORC investigator and relates to a meeting on June 9th, 2023 using the search term “ratepayer.”

Remarkably the QLDC appears to have done nothing as a result of this meeting. As far as we can tell there is no “long term solution.” The elected chair and deputy chair of the QLDC Infrastructure Committee knew nothing about the “decision” that was made at this meeting.

When using Pinpoint to search for the date of the illegal wall, or bund, construction, we found this expert timeline that gave us the exact date of May 2024. We found the timeline so interesting that we think it is worth publishing the whole table.

Keep in mind that the public and councillors were generally told that nothing was seriously wrong with the sewage plant during this entire period.

Another document extract exposed by Pinpoint was a detailed explanation of one of a number of “catastrophic” failures within the main plant - not the disposal field.

This incident started in May 2024.

The blame for many of these failures is placed by Veolia on QLDC’s previous contractor. Crux has approached that contractor for comment but there has been no reply. However, it’s always up to QLDC to operate this plant according to the water quality rules and legislation, albeit via their contractors.

Crux will continue to use Pinpoint to link further parts of this story together. It’s a big but important puzzle to assemble.

In the meantime - what happening in Court?

These affidavits have all been filed in the Environment Court to support the ORC’s case for an Enforcement Order to require QLDC to fix many broken aspects of the sewage plant.

The judge released the affidavits to Crux, and the same judge will decide if the next stage, private mediation, has produced an acceptable legal outcome.

Our understanding is that the mediation process takes place next week.

We asked the court if this would be a “rubber stamping” exercise.

Chrissie McKee

Case/Hearing Manager - Environment Court of New Zealand | Land Valuation Tribunal

“Unfortunately I cannot comment at all on the mediation itself or the details as its all confidential.

“No the Judge does not rubber stamp what is agreed. He would consider any agreement parties file and ensure its enforceable, compliant and is in keeping with the RMA purpose and principles and then issue a determination in due course. Given the proceeding concerns a dispute re non-compliance and a potential change to resource consent conditions he may also require parties to file affidavit evidence in support of any agreement (if agreement can be reached). But we won’t know for sure what will be needed until that mediation process is finished.”

Late in the day - two hours after our deadline, we received this statement form the QLDC:

“The assumptions in your query are inaccurate. All mechanical systems are functioning and biological processes are performing normally.

From Wednesday 19 February, a heavier scum layer formed on the clarifier surface. Whilst we are working to ascertain the cause of this, the operational team has been minimising the layer through the plant’s scum management system.

Total suspended solids from the MLE (Modified Ludzack-Ettinger) process stream have increased but onsite testing shows effluent results are around the consented mean and below the 95th percentile. We are awaiting additional test results from a third-party lab. Based on the onsite lab results, all other parameters appear consistent with previous performance and well within consented limits.”

We will just end today’s coverage with an image of the clarifier tank taken at 9.50 am this morning - Friday, February 28th. Not liquid and certainly not the colour of tea.

More next week. Thanks to our paid subscribers and the Google News Initiative.