District Council pinged over pipeline response
It was a natural event that caused a wastewater pipeline to break, sending 100,000 litres of untreated wastewater into the environment.
But Matamata District Council’s response to the incident on the last working day before the 2018 Christmas holiday was not fast enough, a regional council says.
Waikato Regional Council subsequently prosecuted MPDC for breaching the Resource Management Act by allowing the discharge of contaminants.
Yesterday during an Environment Court hearing in Hamilton, Judge Melanie Harland convicted the district council after it pleaded guilty but reserved her decision on any sentence.
The unfortunate pipe burst Seales Rd on the evening of Friday, December 21, 2018 after a tree came down causing a discharge about 250 metres from the Piako River.
Council’s Kaimai Valley Services’ manager arrived at 6pm at the scene, followed by further staff and a vacuum truck.
Council’s wastewater manager arrived around 8pm and together with the KVS manager the pair discussed repairs, deciding to postpone due to diminishing daylight.
This is where the culpability starts, Prosecutor Jaime O’Sullivan said.
‘‘It’s the failure to act quickly enough and stem what it could of the discharge.’’
Deciding to leave repairs until morning meant untreated wastewater flowed into the environment overnight until works started at 8am.
District Council could have taken steps on the night to mitigate the impact, O’Sullivan said.
‘‘They made the wrong decision that day not to pump the sewage.’’
When interviewed staff expressed a lack of personal knowledge of defined protocols and uncertainty in any event, she said.
Although district council accepted more could have been done, this was not reckless offending, defence counsel David Neutze said.
Both managers were ‘‘hands-on’’ with 20 and 10 years experience respectively.
‘‘It was a response to an emergency. They did their best.
‘‘With the benefit of hindsight that has proved not to be the case.’’
One of the staff said they were not aware of the tributary and did not know it would flow into the river.
‘‘They had to get machinery there, it was getting dark, there was six metres in height and accessibility was not easy.
‘‘Yes they didn’t do enough but their decision was for good reason.’’
He said the wastewater manager resigned as a result of the investigation.
It was unfortunate the contractor never mentioned that pumping from the alternate site was available on the night as he told investigators.
Speaking after the court case, Matamata-Piako mayor Ash Tanner stood by his staff.
‘‘We’re not the bad guy in this situation.
‘‘An incident happened yes, but in my mind I couldn’t have been any happier with how our staff dealt with it at the time,’’ Tanner said.
‘‘[Waikato Regional Council’s comment] We should have worked faster just shows a lack of understanding. It’s coming from a Council that obviously doesn’t own any infrastructure like thousands of kilometres of underground wastewater pipes, storm water pipes and treatment plants, so I just think that’s quite an ignorant statement.’’
How WRC dealt with district council staff, he said, was not appropriate.
‘‘They personally served formal warnings to the two staff members, two managers who went out there and worked under an emergency situation. One, a ‘‘top manager’’ had since left. ‘‘He was that staggered by the fact that he went in to help in an emergency situation and then six months later gets served with that.’’
‘‘I don’t accept it.
‘‘There’s other ways of dealing with this, they could have come to us three weeks later or a month later and sat down and said what could you have done better.
‘‘It’s the same ratepayers prosecuting the same ratepayers. It’s wasting court time.’’