Sewage: QLDC conceals Veolia payments as more facts emerge
ORC court action is already producing results
Also in this Friday Edition:
Sewage: QLDC conceals Veolia payments as more facts emerge
The Queenstown Lakes District Council says it won’t release details of any payments to sewage plant contractor Veolia as the information disclosure could deny them a fair trial in their legal battle with the Otago Regional Council (ORC).
The ORC has filed an application with the Environment Court for enforcement orders that would force QLDC to make over 20 different changes and improvements to the operation of the Shotover sewage plant.
The court documents raise new questions over QLDC’s apparent failure to operate the plant correctly. The ORC is claiming inadequate training, a failure to have spare parts available, poor operating methods, illegal sewage discharges and broken systems.
The court move by ORC follows two abatement notices and ten infringements notices since 2021, with 5 of the infringement notices being issued over the recent Christmas holiday period.
The application to the court also casts considerable doubt over two claims from Mayor Glyn Lewers – that the main plant operations were fine, and the disposal field has no real purpose.
The ORC makes it clear in their court documents that virtually every single aspect of the sewage plant operation is inadequate or broken.
You can read the full ORC court documents here:
The most urgent remedies are connected to the disposal field failure that Crux has covered extensively since November last year.
We now know which company built the non-consented wall around the disposal field last year but not yet who paid for the work.
It seems clear that the contractor who built the wall was acting on instructions from Veolia in Queenstown
Responsibility for the lack of resource consent and problems with the engineering of the wall claimed by the ORC must ultimately sit with Veolia or QLDC or both.
The wall has collapsed on a number of occasions releasing highly toxic effluent into local rivers.
The disposal field is supposed to be 100% dry gravel … but is now blocked with solid waste and inundated with liquid waste. It has failed.
A permanent discharge pipe takes overflowing effluent to the Kawarau River.
The company that built the wall.
Photographs and information from multiple sources indicate that a company trading under the Beaver umbrella brand built the wall, Beaver 2020 Ltd (also Southern Beaver Ltd).
A Beaver construction vehicle at the Shotover disposal field site.
Two Skyline Enterprises directors, Grant Hensman and Donald Jackson are linked to Beaver 2020 Ltd but Mr Hensman’s son in law Garth Lawrence now runs the company day to day. According to Companies Office records, Mr Hensman ceased to be a director and shareholder of the company in May last year.