All 13 Sounds Accommodation Providers Breached Wastewater Conditions

Thursday, 27 February 2025, 11:14 pm
Article: Maia Hart - Local Democracy Reporter

February 26, 2025

The council will increase its visits to Marlborough Sounds accommodation providers after finding all of those discharging wastewater to land were breaching consents.

There are 13 accommodation providers in the Marlborough Sounds that can take more than 15 guests a night and have on-site wastewater systems that discharge to land.

They need a resource consent for commercial wastewater, which sets out discharge parameters, maintenance and reporting requirements.

Environmental protection officer Tonia Stewart presented the results to the Marlborough District Council environment and planning committee and the report would be signed off at full council on Thursday. Similar reports had not been presented to the committee since before Covid-19 but monitoring had still taken place.

While none of the 13 were “significantly non-compliant”, four were “technically non-compliant”, which meant minor breaches with no adverse environmental effects, and nine were non-compliant, which meant there was a breach of a condition or rule that could cause an adverse effect.

Wairau-Awatere ward councillor Sally Arbuckle asked why there was such a difference to the compliance rates in 2018, which was just under 50%.

Stewart thought the Covid-19 pandemic and high staff turnover since the 2021 and 2022 floods had contributed to the problem.

“It's just the consent holders not educating staff to take on the management of the discharge of domestic wastewater.

“A lot of the non-compliance was just like perimeters missed. There was nothing significant, apart from there was two wastewater premises that were issued abatement notices and since then they ... are going through changing their whole system, which is a significant cost to them.

“I know it’s quite devastating to see those statistics, but next year we will be doing site visits, and we will be working closely with them to ensure a much better compliance rating.”

Marlborough Sounds ward councillor Barbara Faulls said the ownership had also changed over for some accommodation providers.

“But let's not forget the two weather events because that was the sole focus. It [wastewater compliance] wouldn't have even occurred to them,” Faulls said.

“All they were trying to do was get through, day by day, and put food on the table.”

Marlborough mayor Nadine Taylor said the report was disappointing.

“It's disappointing to see this come through at this level of non-compliance. Admittedly it is a small number of operators, we must keep that in mind.

“It is good to see in the report that you have a pathway forward to be dealing with these operators. They are a small number so we can deal with them one on one.”

She questioned whether the council should be putting resources into dairy farming compliance which had a near-perfect compliance rate and focusing on other compliance categories instead.

Consents and compliance group manager Gina Ferguson said it had been discussed previously that the council would be reviewing its strategic monitoring programme.

She said they intended to bring this back to councillors before the end of the financial year.

She said commercial Marlborough Sounds wastewater was an existing priority programme but they had not been bringing that information to the committee.

But given the results, it was now a priority, she said.

“In regard to dairy, that will be part of the assessment through our strategic monitoring programme. Dairy, of course, from a national perspective, is high priority and receives a lot of coverage.

“We recognise here that we are receiving positive compliance outcomes but on the other hand it very much depends on the day-to-day management of those systems.

“Also the potential of adverse effects from a system in the dairy sector when it fails is significant, that's the basis of why it's maintained currently in our priority programme.”

LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.

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