Otago Regional Council

So I'm not sure what their position entirely is on it.

But I see the Otago Regional Council granted consent.

So they're who we've been working with in terms of the consent conditions and the application had a lot of gaps in it in terms of the effect on neighbours and effect on, you know, neighbouring stock water, house water, all the way down the catchment kind of thing.

So, yeah, ORC have had meetings in the catchment and, yeah, collating now information, yeah, regarding a review.

So a review is on the cards from ORC on this?

Yep.

Okay.

Yep.

Councils do need to be responsible for ensuring that when growth plays its part and creates waste like this, that we have plans for how that waste will be dealt with, that are sustainable, that are financially responsible and that are environmentally responsible.

The Otago Regional Council says it's taking the concerns seriously and it isn't ruling out a potential review of the resource consent.

The District Council will vote on the issue tomorrow.

And that was Tess Brunton reporting.

We are being forced to subsidize them.

The ORC has been putting on extra buses for them.

The DCC has been selling them too much water.

So there's been water restrictions sometimes in the West Harbour because they've sold them too much water.

So it's semi-treated waste and dried and then trapped here and spread on the ground and incorporated into the soil and yeah but the risk is really high in terms of environmental risk in terms of leaching into waterways like the soil water is not very deep at all kind of one and a half to two meters and so the potential risk for that to get down into house water and stock water schemes is below that farm is yeah it's quite large and yeah people are pretty upset about it and i guess there's two things i mean like the farmers are upset but the community is really upset about the fact that laura's weight uh sorry wanaka's waste is just being dumped on us and it's out of sight out of mind for wanaka so yeah

so just just walk us through it my understanding this was a non-notified consent from the otago regional council how does this occur

Yeah, and I'm not a planner or a lawyer.

I don't really know how that got through being non-notified.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So what's been the response from the powers that be, the Otago Regional Council for people who are controlling this?

Response I've had from councillors is they're not very happy at all that this got through without anyone knowing.

If you see what's happening over at Santana, and of course it's been held up and delayed, that I hope that VO1 has done right, that it, you know, It's all there and transparent and hopefully it goes ahead.

An Otago Regional Council report previously recommended an earlier application be declined because of concerns about water quality, biodiversity and cultural values.

Chelsea McGaw has echoed these concerns.

She's Forest and Bird's Regional Conservation Manager covering Otago and Southland and submitted on the mine expansion when it was going through the traditional consent process last year.

The company says the project would extend into the late 2030s and support hundreds of jobs.

However, an Otago Regional Council staff report on the Erlinger application had recommended it be declined.

They spoke to concerns about the effects on water quality, aquatic ecology, biodiversity and cultural values.

Also, a council audit in 2014 found repeated non-compliance with several environmental monitoring conditions at Macraeus between 2019 to 2024.

on things that they need and let the rest of the provinces carry on.

But then we're going to end up back with basically an Otago Regional Council as well because, I mean, all those functions will possibly stay within one business unit, if you like to say, and that essentially won't change, which is not what we want either because that's where you get so much double up and if councils are doing the same thing, I mean,

While those Queenstown and Dunedin sort of see that coastal and inland environments needing separation, surely the rural-urban separation is the one we should be focusing on?

And I mean, we don't want to kind of associate that with rural-urban divide either, but it's the fact that the urban centres have a whole lot of specific things.

And I mean, they rely heavily then on rural ratepayers to cover a lot of metropolitan activity, basically.

I mean, you'd be living in Belclutha, never using any buses in Dunedin, but you'd be paying for them as we do now from ORC, basically.

I mean, it's the regional council.

What does FED see as the way forward here?