‘We’re prepared to stick at this for as long as it takes’

A group lobbying against a proposed North Taranaki wastewater treatment plant have vowed to fight the council for as long as it takes to prevent it being built.

Urenui Onaero Wastewater Treatment Plant Opposition Steering Group chairperson Jim Hadlow said there were now 120 residents living around the proposed site who were formally against the project going ahead.

“At the end of the day it will devalue all of our properties because no-one wants to buy near a sewerage facility,” he said.

“They could have found a far more suitable site inland and away from the 50-odd properties that it will affect around here, but they haven’t.

“We want to know why, and we’re prepared to stick at this for as long as it takes.”

Hadlow, who lived near the two sites purchased for the treatment plant on Waiau Rd and Main North Rd, believed the New Plymouth District Council had tunnel vision when it came to proposing just one option.

The group believed other alternatives had not been explored in any great detail and council was determined to push on with the project regardless of the consequences for those living in the area.

Hadlow questioned what the final cost would be, why there was no record of just how many people were falling ill because of the poor quality of water in the surrounding rivers and why no other options had been presented to the public.

A council strategic projects committee heard earlier this month the price of delivering the project could double or even triple by the time it was built.

If that eventuated, a project that was estimated to cost $4 million in 2004 could now balloon to more than $120m.

Which led Hadlow to ask: “Are the 34,000 ratepayers in the district who this project does not affect aware of just how much it’s going to cost them?”

A council report said the reticulated sewage and wastewater treatment plant would service 228 properties in the two villages as well as 121 baches in Urenui, 17 in Onaero, and two campgrounds.

The project, which would involve wastewater collected from individual properties and piped to a treatment plant where it would be treated before being discharged through irrigation, had always been regarded as “high priority”.

In 2009 the project was pushed out three years by council as concept design work was undertaken, with the budget estimated to be $14m.

However, by 2012 it was taken out of the council’s Long-term Plan due to cost increases.

Hadlow said the group believed alternative options included treating the wastewater to a swimming standard and piping it out to sea, treating it in Urenui and piping it to the New Plymouth facility, or repairing or replacing the septic tanks in the area that were causing problems.

“If there is a real issue, it needs to be fixed, no doubt about that,” he said.

“But I would have thought if people were actually getting sick and it was linked and verifiable, then a lot more would be getting done to stop people entering those areas,” he said.

He also pointed to the Taranaki Regional Council’s monitoring report of the Urenui and Onaero beach camps for 2022-2023 which said testing did not detect any adverse environmental effects caused by the wastewater systems.