Shotover Delta – Sludge Open Session Tomorrow

The Queenstown Lakes  District Council is holding an open evening tomorrow (Wednesday 4  April) on a proposal to store or reuse sewage sludge that is currently being dredged from the Lower Shotover  oxidation ponds.

An item was recently brought to the Infrastructure Services Committee, outlining the potential savings to the community if the material was stockpiled and reused on the Delta, QLDC project manager Martin O’Malley said. The estimated cost to put all the extracted material in the landfill as a special waste is $4.1m while the estimated cost of keeping the material on the Shotover Delta and re-using it is $1.2m (used to form a rich top soil to grow grass on the delta). The adopted recommended option of keeping the material on the Delta allows QLDC to evaluate other options of drying the material first and then putting it to landfill.

“At the meeting Mayor Vanessa Van Uden and Infrastructure Services Committee Chair Councillor Lyal Cocks said that it was important to get a value for money solution, but it was also important to get feedback from the community through a drop in session in order to gauge the feelings of the community, particularly those who live nearby the proposed storage area,” QLDC project manager Martin O’Malley said.

The drop in session will be open 5-8pm at the Queenstown Event Centre. People who would like to find out more about the proposal were encouraged to attend with QLDC staff on hand to answer questions.

ENDS
For more information please contact Martin O’Malley 03 441 0499.

By: Andrea Bunting