Gore estimates cost of $300m to comply with freshwater rules
Tuesday, 16 February 2021
A small Southland council with less than 6000 ratepayers is potentially facing a $300m bill to comply with new freshwater regulations.
Gore District Council chief executive Steve Parry said meeting the cost of the Government's compliance was “the perfect financial storm.’’
The government’s new rules aim to improve freshwater quality in a generation.
Councils countrywide were now realising the enormity of the costs involved in complying with the rules, Parry said.
“The step change required is massive. Engineers are saying it's a 50-year problem, a multigenerational problem that needs to be fixed.
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“It reflects the fact that infrastructure like wastewater and sewerage pipes were put in the ground years ago and forgotten about and so now they need upgrading. You can guarantee dollars to doughnut that would have been a Government-assisted scheme, and now we’re going to require Government assistance to fix them.’’
The council’s website says there are 3816 rating units in Gore, 800 rating units in Mataura and 1348 rural rating units, and the council was lobbying for Government funding to help pay for the upgrades.
“There’s just no way we can pay for it alone. It’s the perfect financial storm.
“We simply cannot increase the level of debt to those numbers to pay for it ourselves.’’
Eastern Southland is also the home base of Groundswell, a farming organisation set up to fight excessive Government legislation being phased in under the National Environmental Standard for freshwater.
The Groundswell organisation has already publicly said some of the legislation will not work for farmers in the south and the costs associated with some legislation would be expensive to implement.
Farmers have driven their tractors through the town’s main street to protest against the increased environmental and farm monitoring required because of the new national standards and the district council is also facing a hefty bill to upgrade storm water networks and change how they treat and dispose of wastewater to comply.
The council’s infrastructure general manager Ramesh Sharma said the $300m price tag ‘’isn’t unrealistic.’’
“It is important to realise this expenditure would be over a long time – several decades in fact.
“The Gore District Council, as with other local authorities throughout New Zealand, is facing significant expenditure to meet Government regulations, and believe central Government should provide funding assistance,’’ Sharma said.
Sharma said there was currently a lot of uncertainty regarding what the council would need to invest to meet the new freshwater rules.
The council has identified about $175 million to resolve capacity issues in the Gore storm water network. It was proposing to spend between $48 million and $63 million on upgrades to the Gore and Mataura wastewater treatment plants during the next 30 years.
“We also need to consider other factors that we don’t fully understand at the moment such as private property storm water/wastewater pipeline separation, resolving storm water capacity issues in Mataura, and providing storm water treatment.’’
The Government is looking at 3 Water reforms and having public owned entities to run water and wastewater services.
It has created Taumara Arowai, a new regulator which will oversee the entire drinking water sector and ensure councils are meeting standards.
Taumata Arowai is a Crown agent, which will operate at arm’s-length from ministers. It will also introduce rules around water source protection and Taumata Arowai’s role overseeing wastewater and storm water functions.
Parry said work was already under way on upgrading the drinking water supply in Gore, including a $10m upgrade of the East Gore water treatment plant.
However, work on wastewater was a ‘’murkier’’ problem, and it would be far more costly, he said.
In November 2020 the council announced it planned to build a new multi-million dollar biological nutrient removal treatment plant to treat wastewater before discharging it to the Mataura River.
The plan will be done in three stages and completed in 2050 and will cost between $46 to $61 million.
Parry said the timeline to build the plant would be subject to consents being issued, but it would go some way to making the council more compliant with freshwater rules.
The council is currently working on lodging applications with Environment Southland to renew discharge resource consents for the Gore and Mataura wastewater treatment plants. It has consent to discharge treated wastewater and stormwater to the Mataura River from the Gore oxidation pond and the Mataura oxidation pond.
The discharges are consented for terms expiring in May 2021 at Mataura and December 2023 at Gore.