Not so fast on river clean-up

Cleaning up their stretch of the Waikato River is too hard and too costly, Hamilton City Council officials say.

They’re now preparing to lodge an Environment Court appeal against tricky and expensive provisions in the Waikato Regional Council’s plans to improve water quality in the Waikato and Waipa¯ rivers.

But while it appears on the face of it to be a sneaky move by the city council to avoid the responsibility of doing their bit to make the rivers swimmable, the truth of the situation is a little more clouded.

Rather, the city council intends to argue for the retention of the status quo in terms of the quality of the water that is discharged into the Waikato River via the city’s stormwater and wastewater systems for the foreseeable future.

That’s partially because the technology to improve the water being discharged does not yet exist, and the level to which it needs to be improved is not yet known.

As planner Paul Ryan explained to a city council meeting yesterday, the legal appeal would not delay overall efforts to improve the water quality.

It was effectively a request to go with the flow for the meantime, until the waters become a little less murky.

Ryan told councillors that while most of the points of contention could likely be amicably thrashed out between the councils in a future mediation process, a sticking point could likely be the issue of ‘‘mixing zones’’ – the point at which impure waters merge with the river flow downstream of a discharge point.

One such discharge point was the outflow from the Pukete Wastewater Treatment Plant and, using current technology, upgrading the quality to the standard the regional council wanted would cost ‘‘many millions of dollars,’’ Ryan said.

‘‘We can’t in the short term clean up the rivers to the desired extent.’’

The regional council’s Healthy Rivers/Wai Ora plan focused on managing four contaminants – nitrogen, phosphorous, sediment and bacteria – over an 80-year timeframe. The ultimate goal was having a river that was safe to swim in and also gather food from, without the risk of sickness from either activity.

Councillor Maxine van Oosten said she was concerned about ‘‘reputational risk’’ from news of the legal challenge – that the appeal ‘‘could be interpreted in a negative way, or see us criticised as not having the same goals.’’

Ryan said the legal challenge should not be construed as an indication the city council was shirking its commitment to halting the pollution of the river, even with the rapid urban grown in Hamilton in recent years.

‘‘There are already projects budgeted at hundreds of millions of dollars in the long term plan.’’

The city council had estimated the cost of an appeal to the Environment Court had been estimated at somewhere between $46,000 and $132,000, which could be accommodated within its budgets. The ultimate cost of meeting the regional council’s river quality requirements was not yet known, however.

‘‘We have not done that detailed analysis and the analysis is going to be expensive itself,’’ Ryan said.

Cr Rob Pascoe wondered whether the regional council was trying to enforce an unattainable ‘‘gold standard’’.

Chief executive Richard Briggs said the city council could collaborate with other councils on how to best respond to the goals set in the rivers plan.

‘‘There may be opportunities for how we split the load.’’

Meanwhile, the regional council has announced it is also going to launch a $180,000 appeal to the Environment Court against itself over the Healthy Rivers plan, in a bid to resolve ‘‘technical implementation issues’’.

The decision to appeal the plan change was made at a regional council meeting also held yesterday

While it would be unusual for the regional council to appear in court both as appellant and proponent, it was not unprecedented for a council to appeal its own plan, councillors were told.

It is estimated the appeal will cost $180,000 over two years.

Legal advice from Simpson Grierson to the council noted that, while not preferable, an appeal ‘‘may be appropriate’’ if there were aspects the council ‘‘simply cannot live with from a practical implementation point of view or there are important improvements that could be made”.