Akaroa residents want reimbursement for helping ‘expose’ flaws in council wastewater scheme

Thursday, 10 April 2025

Akaroa wastewater. A sign by the existing Akaroa wastewater plant.

Banks Peninsula residents should be reimbursed for the cost of helping “expose” the Christchurch City Council’s contentious - and now paused - Akaroa wastewater treatment scheme, a resident advocate says.

The request comes weeks after locals and experts poked enough holes in the council’s scheme for the council to halt its resource application on the $100 million project and return to the drawing board.

Akaroa local Harry Stronach told councillors this week as part of the council’s annual plan hearings they should thank the Friends of Banks Peninsula group (FOBP) for saving them from a “train crash” wastewater treatment scheme that was “fundamentally flawed”.

Akaroa locals Annette Moore, Sue Church, Bill Abbott, Chris Moore and Suky Thompson

“I can recognise an injustice when I see it,” Stronach, chairperson of the Akaroa Residents and Ratepayers Association, said.

He said the community raised and spent close to $100,000 on independent experts, and argued this was money better spent on community projects and ought to be reimbursed.

The council has spent $20m over 12 years developing a scheme, buying land, reviewing options and other background work to get to this point.

For half a century, Akaroa’s treated wastewater has flowed into the harbour, stopping people from swimming and collecting shellfish nearby. The sewage plant is also situated on the culturally sensitive site of Takapūneke. The council pledged in 2007 to move it and correct the historical insult to mana whenua.

The council preferred a scheme that discharged treated wastewater to land through irrigation. While there was a risk of overflow and discharge into the harbour during emergencies, such as extreme weather events, the council expected this to be once every few years.

But FOBP was sceptical. Its trust in the council was broken after a calculation mishap was revealed about 2017. Stronach - who said he was not a member of FOBP - told councillors community-funded experts helped “expose” the scheme’s flaws once evidence was heard by a panel of Resource Management Act (RMA) commissioners in January.

The hearings were adjourned to March, but in February - based on evidence heard so far - the commissioners sent the council 48 questions about the scheme.

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Those questions - provided to The Press by the city council - asked if the storage calculations were appropriate, if pumping stations were required at Robinsons Bay to get wastewater up the hill and, if so, how many and where, and why slopes greater than 19 degrees were being proposed in the irrigation field when experts had advised against it.

The commissioners particularly wanted the council to be “very clear” in what level of treatment it was proposing, why it chose the system it did, and if that system would remove contaminants to the same extent as an alternative system.

The council had not applied for consent to discharge treated wastewater into the harbour, but - prompted by FOBP evidence - commissioners suggested this was necessary if the council’s scheme was not 100% land based.

The council later conceded it should do more work. On March 13, it decided to halt the process to address the concerns raised, and because by that time it had learnt the Government would change RMA rules and wastewater standards this year.

Christchurch City Council three waters head Gavin Hutchison, right, with chief executive Mary Richardson, left, and mayor Phil Mauger, at a press confrence in 2024.

The council said it would look at alternative wastewater treatment schemes - again.

Stronach said the council’s citing of proposed Government changes was just “a convenient face-saving reason” to pause the consent.

None of the councillors directly acknowledged his reimbursement request.

Gavin Hutchison, the council’s head of three waters, said the council did not cover costs accrued by submitters involved in RMA processes, like this one. However, it was up for councillors to decide if it was appropriate to reimburse costs through the council’s annual plan.

FOBP member Suky Thompson said it was nice to know Akaroa ratepayers were batting for them. The group - scheduled to speak to councillors about the annual plan on Friday - had not planned to ask for compensation for the $91,000 spent to date, but Thompson said they would welcome it.

She said the group was grateful for the time and effort the hearing panel had put in to understanding the issue.

“We haven’t cracked the champagne yet though - clearly this saga still has some more laps to run,” she said.

In the meantime, treated wastewater continues to flow into Akaroa Harbour.

“We understand that this time frame may cause doubt and frustration for residents and mana whenua in Akaroa and surrounding communities,” Hutchison said. “However, it would be irresponsible for us as a council to investigate alternative disposal methods without considering the impacts of the new national standards.”

The council would continue to prepare public land for an irrigation scheme by planting more than 160,000 trees, mainly kānuka, as the seedlings had to be planted to keep growing and it would increase biodiversity in the area. Hutchison said the tree planting did not require resource consent.