Ocean discharge should not be option

The Palmerston North City Council is asking us again what wastewater treatment and disposal system we want for the city. Last year it asked our views on six options and now it has selected three that it thinks are best.

It has said that equal numbers of people preferred full discharge to land as preferred continued discharge to the river of better treated effluent. It said 27 per cent favoured each of these options. What it didn’t say was that 23 per cent wanted continued discharge to the river least of all as opposed to only 7 per cent wanting discharge to land least of all.

It also didn’t say that the almost full discharge to land option was the first, second and third choice of 640 of the 1109 respondents while the full discharge to the river option was first, second or third choice of only 533 respondents.

Maybe those numbers aren’t massively different so it might make sense for both options to still be on the table. In contrast, direct discharge to the ocean was the first choice of only 7 per cent, was the first, second or third choice of only 187 people and a huge 44 per cent wanted this option least of all.

Not only this, but neighbouring councils have already adopted mainly land-based systems and so will not want or need to join Palmerston North in any regional scheme to dump wastewater out at sea. For these reasons the discharge to the ocean option should be taken off the table and then let the real discussion be about whether we should keep disposing of wastewater into the river or not and, if not, how much can we practically discharge to land.

Dr Chris Teo-sherrell, Water Protection

Society chairperson