Protection for lake

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32540, 25 February 1971, Page 12

Protection for lake

Discharge of partiallytreated sewage into Lake Ellesmere, permitted for part of the year as a result of a Town and Country Planning Appeal Board decision, was discussed at length last evening by the council of the North Canterbury Acclimatisation Society.

The society appealed against a decision permitting the Ellesmere County Council to discharge partlytreated sewage into a stream which in turn, ran into Lake Ellesmere. The Town and Country Planning Appeal Board ruled that the effluent shotild be disposed of on land by irrigation, for about eight months of the year, and run into the stream for the remaining four months when the land was too water-log-ged to take it.

It was ruled that this discharge into the stream must be on the authority of the county engineer, and that strict records must be kept of the discharge.

The appeal board’s decision marked the first time there had been a ruling to stop effluent going into a lake before the lake suffered from blue-green algae, said the chairman of the society’s

wdter conservation and pollution committee (Mr P. C, Dawson). The decision had been well worth the $777 it had cosl the society, he said.

The executive committee reported that the conditions of discharge imposed on the Ellesmere County Council achieved “about 80 per cent of the protection sought.” Mr N. Chidgey felt that not enough protection had been achieved for the lake, and that “. . . the way is now open for other polluters, and this the society will have to fight tooth and nail.” The president (Mr N. I. Voyce) said the decision of the appeal board gave the county council permission to follow the disposal scheme for five years, “.. . and if we can go back after five years and say Lake Ellesmere is polluted, where do we go then?” “I feel that the court was scared to find in our favour because of the repercussions elsewhere in New Zealand,” he said. It would have been used as a test case in other parts of the country, he claimed. But Mr Dawson said he thought the decision was a correct one under the law.

“I do not see what else, under the circumstances, we could have gained.”

The alternative was a scheme under which the effluent would have been piped several miles, and this would have added about 50c a head a year on to the costs to the Leeston population. “We have had- an appeal heard and a ruling given before the lake has become a piece of waste water.” The society’s appeal had brought about a change in the county council’s application, he said. The original application had been for discharge of the effluent straight into the stream, but after the society’s objections this was changed to putting part of the effluent on to the land and part in the stream. “We have gained a hell of a lot of ground since we started this case.”

When he presented the water conservation and pollution committee’s report, Mr Dawson told the society’s council that both field and laboratory work on a Waimakariri River biological survey had now been done, and the results were now being analysed. He was told the results would be "very illuminating,” he said-