Governor’s Bay to vote on $1M scheme

Press, 2 August 1985, Page 5

Governor’s Bay to vote on $1M scheme

Governor’s Bay ratepayers will vote next month on whether the Mount Herbert County Council should raise a loan of more than $1 million to build a water supply and sewerage scheme for the area. A poll of all 175 Governor’s Bay residents will be held on September 4 and a majority either for or against the loan will decide whether it goes ahead. The council proposes to borrow $1,235,000 for the scheme and levy a special property rate within the Governor’s Bay Urban Drainage Area to pay for it. If the loan is approved by the Government the work will be eligible for a Health Department subsidy of about $170,000 for the initial sewerage reticulation. Ratepayers will be asked also whether they favour a uniform lump sum payment or an annual rating charge to meet the scheme’s capital cost. Two alternative sewerage scheme proposals and three alternative water schemes have been put forward by the council. The most likely acceptable arrangement would be a sewerage scheme with treatment and discharge at Governor’s Bay

and a water supply scheme to keep household tanks topped up. Under this arrangement, ratepayers would face a lump sum capital repayment of $5160 or an annual rate of $584. Both options would require an annual running, maintenance, and bulk-purchase charge of $9O. The most expensive option—a sewerage scheme with pumping to .Lyttelton for treatment and discharge, and full mains pressure water supply—would involve a capital repayment of $6550 or an annual rate of $739. This option would have an annual charge of $2OO. A decision to poll ratepayers was made last year after a public meeting on August 16. Both the council and the Health Department had been concerned about public health in Governor’s Bay because of sewage and waste water disposal methods. A Health Department survey was released last year which showed that some of the sewerage and waste water disposal supply facilities in the district were unsatisfactory. The department’s survey, which covered 85 per cent

of the area’s households, showed that water to 11 of the 17 houses with ground water or springwater supplies was unacceptable for human consumption. Sixteen per cent of all household sewerage and wastewater disposal systems were undesirable with a total failure rate of 6 per cent. Six of the seven seawater samples taken from points along the foreshore regularly failed shellfish bed criteria. The survey concluded that a reticulated sewerage scheme would be the only “Practical means of improving the situation effectively.” It also said that a public water supply was highly desirable. In a notice to ratepayers in July, 1984, the council said that it could be required by the department to install a sewerage scheme at ratepayers’ expense in the extreme case of a continuing and worsening public health problem in the area. A council survey last August indicated that the majority of residents wanted a scheme implemented in one form or another.