Pay out over fund shortfall

City councillors this week agreed to pay up $300,000 it has shortchanged the Environmental Mitigation & Enhancement Fund, in recognition of the fact that a Fund review was not conducted as required by the resource consent.

The fund is part of the resource consent the council requires to continue operating the Te Maunga sewerage treatment plant ponds. Also required by the consent was the creation of the Waste Water Management Review Committee with its unique blend of elected councillors and appointed iwi representatives.

The fund was established in 2005. The council hasn't paid into the fund since it reached $250,000 in 2009/10. The $300,000 is for the six years the council hasn't paid its annual $50,000.

Two applications to the fund were successful in 2011/12: The Manaaki Te Awanui Charitable Trust received $130,000, and Ngapotiki a Tamapahore Trust $ 29,100 both for hard science information collecting to determine the effects of seepage. There's still $90,900 in the fund.

Iwi members have over the last three years successfully challenged the city council's previous interpretation of the consent and its application by the council, culminating in two papers presented this year raising issues that include the council's breaching of the pond's resource consent, seepages from the ponds into Rangataua Bay, and the future structure, role, and scope of the Waste Management Review Committee

Tangata Whenua also identified additional funding for the Environmental Mitigation & Enhancement Fund as a key issue to address both environmental and cultural impacts of the Te Maunga wastewater treatment plant and the wider wastewater activity.

Council staff support the tangata whenua members call for council signing a memorandum of understanding on matters relating to wastewater, the EMEF and the WMRC to formalize council commitments on such matters.

The call for a cultural and monitoring plan was picked up by councillors. John Robson's question on how much is currently spent on assessing the impact of the city's wastewater on the wider environment was unable to be immediately answered by staff.

It's about $100,000, with about $20,000 for sample lab testing and $80,000 on consenting monitoring, including the ponds, the treatment plant and the ocean outfall.

Kelvin Clout says the upper harbour is not just affected by the waste water plant, but also run off and other environmental factors and he wants to know if the fund can be more widely applied.

Steve Morris wants assurance the fund will be used for ‘good science'.

'The harbour is clearly most precious asset it is used by everybody for a whole range of functions and we have plonked a reasonably high risk piece of infrastructure there, the Te Maunga Wastewater Treatment Plant,” says Mayor Stuart Crosby.

'It has had issues and we need to acknowledge that. We are going to have to put some significant investment into addressing those issues, as we well should.

'We have failed at times to adhere to the resource consent, we need to address that. But more importantly, I do support the broader context of what this fund can be used for. There is a very strong argument that we should be doing this anyway – and not effectively being levered into it through this particular condition.”

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2 comments

SHAME

Posted on 25-09-2016 11:08 | By Smilarkie

TCC, the Mayor and all on the council should hang their heads in shame, and resign. You admit making an enviromental mistake and breaching a resource consent. You should be held personally liable for this. You are employed by the people of Tauranga to be on top of these issues. An absolutely disgusting mess, and is once again a massive waste of taxpayers money, that will have implications for years to come. SHAME SHAME


Science or nonscience

Posted on 25-09-2016 13:42 | By BullShtAlert

Science is science. There's no bad or good, cultural or whatever else science. The reality is there's very little pollution from the plant. There is however a fund of money that seems to be attracting interest.


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