Pond’s troubled waters
Nelson City Council staff have sabotaged the Tahunanui Modellers Pond cleanup process with their passive-aggressive, obstructive and disparaging behaviour, a company working on the cleanup says.
A letter from Dr Simon Tannock, owner of Diatomix company AlgaEnviro, was sent to councillors informing them of the withdrawal of the company’s support from the project.
Tannock said the NCC was AlgaEnviro’s ‘‘smallest client’’ but accounted for a disproportionate amount of weekly ‘‘discussion and interaction’’.
‘‘This would be acceptable, if the advice we provide was acted upon, as our other clients do, rather than objecting to the advice or disparaging the advice.
‘‘Put plainly, we have better things to do than provide a service to engineers who do not want the service offered to be successful.’’
Tannock said the council had undertaken actions to undermine the use of Diatomix ‘‘since the time when this project was being planned for’’.
An example was that the council said the trial should stop if a diatom bloom of ‘‘significant concern’’ occurred, and only start again once AlgaEnviro could demonstrate that measures were in place to prevent a recurrence.
‘‘Given the Diatomix treatment has been developed to cause diatom blooms, having a mitigation strategy that stops dosing of Diatomix in the event of a diatom bloom was clearly an attempt at shutting the trial down at the earliest opportunity,’’ Tannock said in the letter, obtained by Stuff.
He listed other alleged attempts at self-sabotage, such as the removal of all budget for water pumping; taking inadequate photo records of the progress at the pond, despite being warned that current photo records were not adequate; and insufficient record-keeping, including a refusal to use Excel and the provision of data in outof-focus photographs of handwritten data sheets.
‘‘I could go on with a number of other examples, but I am sure councillors would find this as tedious to read as I would to write it,’’ Tannock wrote.
‘‘We have never encountered this passive-aggressive behaviour from a client, as our other clients actually want our help and the intended outcome.’’
Tannock described NCC staff as ‘‘somewhere between perfunctory and actively obstructive’’ to the project.
The pond has been a green, algae-filled mess for years, with many unsuccessful attempts at clearing the algae already trialled. Other options for cleaning the pond have come to estimates of $1.73 million in cost.
The latest trial was undertaken at a cost of $135,000 over three months from August, using the Diatomix product.
The product consists of a mix of silica-coated nano-sized nutrient packs called flocs, which are eaten by diatoms, a type of microorganism which are eaten by other micro-organisms, insects and fish.
The algae dominating the pond now is not generally eaten by these organisms, so grow out of control. Algae do not consume silica, so only diatoms will benefit from the nutrients inside the flocs. The Diatomix essentially feeds the beneficial diatoms, helping them outperform and starve out algal blooms, resulting in a clean pond.
‘‘Our other clients actually want our help and the intended outcome.’’ Dr Simon Tannock, Alga Enviro
Tannock said he knew ‘‘for a certainty’’ that ‘‘the highest levels’’ of council management did not expect Diatomix to work, and he believed that those people did not want it to work, an attitude he said was filtering down through council staff ranks.
He assured councillors that his system was ‘‘very effective’’. He included before-and-after photos of a wetland which he said was treated with Diatomix.
Council CEO Pat Dougherty said he did not intend to provide ‘‘any substantive comment’’ on the issues outlined in the letter until the full council received the last report on the trial on December 13.
‘‘I am confident that the trial was conducted in a professional and impartial manner,’’ he said.
Nelson Mayor Rachel Reese said she was also waiting to see the report.
Councillor Matt Lawrey said it was an ‘‘interesting situation’’, but he would wait to see the upcoming report before commenting.
Cr Mel Courtney said it was possible that the letter was an attempt by the contractor to ‘‘extricate themselves’’ from the trial, but he was thankful to Tannock for being upfront.
‘‘It’s good that AlgaEnviro have sent it to every councillor, because without them openly acknowledging and telling us about this, we wouldn’t know, we wouldn’t have been aware of this problem at all,’’ he said.
‘‘In some ways, grateful to them for having the strength of character to say, ‘We can’t deal with these people any more’.’’
Courtney said he was ‘‘appalled’’ at the content of the letter, and that Dougherty and Reese ‘‘should have their heads together and be sorting it out right now’’.