Officials stalling sewerage scheme say Lake Rotoiti residents

By JO-MARIE BROWN

Lake Rotoiti residents are accusing council officials of trying to delay the installation of a sewerage scheme that will ultimately help to improve the lake's health.

But Rotorua District Council staff say work to replace septic tanks at Okawa Bay and Mourea with a reticulated system is on track despite renewed debate over who should pay.

Nutrients from septic tanks at lake settlements have been seeping into the water for decades and fuelling toxic algal growth. Water quality scientists have recommended reticulated sewerage be installed.

But Rotoiti resident and LakesWater Quality Society spokesman Brentleigh Bond said council bureaucrats were now trying to "muddy the waters" by presenting funding options that took into account proposed sewerage schemes at other lakes as well.

Money has already been set aside to pay for Okawa Bay and Mourea's $3 million sewer but councillors have been told they need to consider how to pay for over $30 million of reticulated schemes at other settlements.

District engineer Paul Sampson said the debate centred on what percentage individual property owners and general ratepayers should pay.

Any decision on Okawa Bay and Mourea would set a precedent for future schemes so the issue had to be properly considered, he said.

But Mr Bond and other residents say the debate is an attempt to delay the pipeline.

"The councillors at the RDC are trying to get it moving. But the bureaucrats are carrying on as if there's never been a resolution to install the pipeline because they don't want to see it done," Mr Bond said. "In the meantime the lake is dying."

Councillor Glenys Searancke, who chairs the works committee which approved the project last September, said she was extremely frustrated by Mr Sampson's funding report.

"I want to deal with [the Okawa Bay/Mourea scheme], the one we've promised for nearly four years.

"Let's get this one done and worry about those other ones as they come to hand," she said yesterday.

But fellow councillor Neil Oppatt disagreed, saying work on designing the pipeline was well under way and was not being held up by discussions on how it should be funded.

Mr Sampson said the pipeline should be installed within the next nine months or so.

But he cautioned that a sewerage scheme would remove only a fraction of the nutrients entering Lake Rotoiti. "Okawa Bay is unlikely to see any benefit for 25 years so this 'panic panic' situation, in my view, is not very responsible."