'Inherently unfair': Central Otago pushes back on Wānaka sewage sludge disposal

Central Otago's mayor and councillors have told their counterparts in Queenstown they have significant concerns about treated human waste from Wānaka being spread on farmland near Lauder.

A letter shared on social media by Central Otago Mayor Tamah Alley urges Queenstown Lakes District Council (QLDC) to halt the operation and work towards a mutually agreeable long-term solution.

QLDC's contractor SJ Allen has been trucking treated sewage sludge from Wānaka to the Lauder site under a non-notified consent issued by Otago Regional Council in January, as a lower-cost alternative to disposing of it at landfill.

Queenstown mayor John Glover said his council relied on the consent in good faith, and it was saving more than $1 million, but he was open to discussing alternatives.

Alley said she and several councillors were at a meeting in Lauder this week where residents expressed frustration at having been denied any say.

"There is a huge sentiment out there that it is just inherently unfair what has happened... they feel like they've been marginalised," she said.

"They understand that sludge needs to go somewhere - they are farmers... but they are concerned that particular piece of land is not necessarily the right piece of land for that activity to take place.

"They're worried about the odour. They're worried about the dust coming off the site. They're worried about the impact on local waterways, which includes the places where people get their drinking water from."

Central Otago District Council (CODC) was limited in what it could do, she said: "but the least we can do is send a letter to QLDC and ask them to reconsider".

It had also asked Otago Regional Council to review the consent, she said.

The council's letter called on QLDC to reconsider its options "not only as a contractual or cost issue but through the lens of being a good neighbour".

Glover said he understood the concerns raised by those in Lauder and he believed Alley had shown leadership by bringing her community's concerns directly to QLDC.

The primary question was whether the regional council's consent was valid and defensible, which any review would need to determine, he said.

"That's a matter for the regional council and CODC, I think, need to really press hard on that," he said.

QLDC had relied in good faith on the resource consent issued by the regional council, he said.

However, if CODC believed the regional council's consenting process was unsound or failed to assess environmental impacts properly, it should strongly consider a judicial review, Glover said.

Using the Lauder site saved QLDC ratepayers about $1.25 million compared to carting the sludge to Winton landfill, he said.

"In the world of rate-capping, that is a significant amount of money," he said.

"My understanding from speaking to Mayor Alley is that they don't have a concern about the principle of sewage sludge disposal for land. It's just this particular location where it's happening.

"And Tamah spoke to me this morning saying that there's lots of places in her district where it could be undertaken without impacts in the way that they're worried about at all. So, I think getting together, working out what future options look like is eminently sensible."

The CODC had previously considered using the Lauder site to dump its own growing volume of treated effluent after staff warned bags containing thousands of cubic metres of dried sludge needed a new home.

The plan triggered local outrage with the council instead voting to send it to Winton landfill in Southland after discovering the Lauder site might not have the capacity for all of its sludge.

Otago Regional Council chief executive Richard Saunders declined to comment.

He previously said the site had a regular monitoring and compliance programme underway and a potential review of the original resource consent had not been ruled out.