Luxury complex hits snag

Plans to open the first part of a luxury hotel and apartment complex at Tutukaka today have been stymied due to the late filing of a resource consent application to truck raw sewage from the site.
The first part of the Oceans Resort Tutukaka hotel and conference complex was due to open today but the hotel's sewerage system - which was a condition of the complex's original resource consent - will not be ready in time.
Jadco Investments, the Auckland company developing the complex, has applied to the Whangarei District Council to vary the resource consent for the proposal so that sewage can be trucked from the hotel until the sewerage system is built.
But the application was not received by the council until December 23, leaving insufficient time to deal with it before today.
A council spokeswoman said the company would have to have all the necessary resource consents in place before it could open.
"They will not have this approved by January 10. As far as we are concerned, it is not entitled to open on January 10," the spokeswoman said.
She said the company had known for several weeks beforehand that a consent variation was required and the council's engineers and most of its planners, who needed to examine the application, were on leave until today.
A decision would have to be made on whether the application needed to be publicly notified and any people who made submissions on sewage in the original consent application for the complex would be asked for comment.
John Hamilton, from Jadco, could not be contacted to comment on the council's position.
In its application for the consent variation, the company says the 27-room hotel part of the complex is due to open today while the 34-unit apartment side was due to be completed on or before February 28.
However, construction of the sewerage system for the complex will not begin until February, and would not be fully operational until mid-July.
This could mean a lag of up to 28 weeks between the hotel part being operational and the scheme being fully operational. But if part of the plant can be made operational by mid-April to service the hotel rooms, the delay would be 13 weeks.
The company estimates that the hotel's occupants would produce between nine and 13 cubic metres of sewage every day, which would be stored in a holding tank on council land in Marlin Dr.
Effluent would not be held for longer than 72 hours before being removed to the Whangarei Wastewater Treatment Plant in Kioreroa Rd. Pumping out of the sewage would be between 6.30am and 7.30am, with the waste contractor - Waste Management - estimating it would take up to 45 minutes to pump out 13cu.m. The level of sewage in the emergency holding tank would be checked at least twice daily by hotel staff.
In its assessment of adverse effects from the activity, the company said the potential of odour from emptying the storage tanks was the only significant concern of the temporary pumping out of the sewage.
"In this regard, all necessary and appropriate measures will be undertaken to avoid release of offensive, or objectionable odour from the operation of the temporary facility," the application said.
"Having regard to the measures to be adopted, it is considered that there is very little likelihood of the release of offensive, or objectionable odour from the operation of the temporary facility."