Muck to oil idea for Otane

Marty Sharpe
Otane's sewage could soon come up smelling like eucalyptus oil, Maitland Manning told a hearing into the renewal of the Otane sewerage pond's resource consent yesterday.
Mr Manning's submission provided the most stimulating moments in what was otherwise a very dry seven hours on the application lodged with Hawke's Bay Regional Council by Central Hawke's Bay District Council.
The district council's resource consents for the oxidation ponds at Waipukurau, Waipawa and Otane are all up for renewal, and while the council has requested 35-year consents for the ponds, regional council staff recommend consents are given only until 2018.
The district council's chief executive officer Ken Fox, and three experts yesterday put the council's case for Otane, with Mr Fox saying the council would "be prepared to accept a minimum consent duration of 20 years", or until 2025.
The regional council hearings committee will hear the remaining applications and submissions today and tomorrow. Mr Manning, who is also a Central Hawke's Bay District councillor, owns land adjacent to the Otane treatment pond and has allowed Waipawa company Eucalypts.net to plant 47,000 eucalyptus saplings on 5ha of his land, only 150m from the pond.
Treated sewage is currently discharged through a pipe onto an open drain that crosses private property owned by Neil White. The council believes it can improve the discharge quality by buying the drain from Mr White and building three weirs along it, but Mr White does not want to sell.
The council expects the work to cost $150,000, and had budgeted a further $200,000 to buy the drain, or secure its long-term use, with annual operating costs of $10,000. The Ministry of Health agreed to make a $75,000 contribution to the scheme under its "sanitary works subsidy scheme".
An alternative option put forward by the district council was to buy land from Mr White near the ponds and to create a wetland that would naturally treat the discharge. That was expected to cost $350,000, plus $18,000 in annual operating costs.
Mr White, who made a verbal submission yesterday, said he would not sell the drain as he was concerned about contamination of an underground aquifer, but said he was "quite amenable to selling land near the existing pond for future expansion".
He also said he wanted the council to consider using the treated sewage to irrigate trees.
Which was where Mr Manning came in with the eucalyptus oil.
"It's a little bit revolutionary for councils to accept at this stage," he said, "but if it works it can solve some of the issues all of New Zealand suffers".
It would cost the council only $25,000 or so to distribute the treated sewage through the eucalyptus trees.
"There is no charge on the land and if there's a profit we can share in the profit," he said.
His plan was "a possible long-term solution for the expansion of Otane," said Mr Manning, who reckoned the town's population was closer to 680 and not 520, as claimed by the district council.
Hearings committee chair Adrienne Williams thanked Mr Manning for his submission.