Frustrations are starting to simmer at several Dunedin secondary schools over new Otago Regional Council regulations, implemented for coal-fired boilers, which are costing schools hundreds of thousands of dollars in compliance costs.
The council has offered an incentive to resource consent applicants with coal-fired boilers with a capacity of more than 1MW, to invest in upgrades and install modern, efficient technologies, including filtration of pollutants and conversion to woodchips or pellet technologies.
ORC resource management director Selva Selvarajah said the council had done this by offering ''grace periods'' for installation with 35-year term discharge consents to businesses, organisations and schools seeking new or renewed consents for discharges-to-air.
These types of consents would ordinarily be granted for much shorter periods and might require public notification, he said.
''ORC's vision is to ensure that Otago air is safe to breathe. We promote discharge standards that are likely to meet any international standards on emission rates.''
Many schools in Otago have already converted to wood pellet boilers, in line with the new regulations, but primary school boilers were less than 1MW so were not affected.
However, the 1MW boilers at Kaikorai Valley College, King's High School and Queen's High School were affected, and their resource consents to discharge-to-air were due for renewal.
Kaikorai Valley College principal Rick Geerlofs said the school would have to pay about $275,000 out of its five-year property plan to upgrade and bring the school's coal-fired boiler into line with the new ORC standards.
While he supported the ORC's bid to clean up air pollution, he believed it was a compliance issue that had been forced on schools, and no additional funding had been supplied by the ministry to cover that cost.
''About $275,000 has to come out of our school five-year property plan.
''That may well delay some building projects that have been planned. You could argue that this is taking valuable funding away from our students' education.
''We have no issue with the cleaning up of Dunedin's air. The problem is that none of these costs were anticipated and built in to our five-year property plan.
''It was dropped on us 12 months ago.''
King's High School board of trustees chairman Tim Black agreed.
He said King's and Queen's High Schools shared two coal-fired boilers and both schools were now looking at alternatives to remedy the problem.
''We don't have funding from the ministry for this work. We're going to have to use money intended for pupil education. It's a concern,'' Mr Black said.
A pollutant filtration system costs about $275,000 and a new woodchip boiler costs about $900,000, but Mr Black said Government organisations were only offering $75,000 towards the cost.
''That leaves us with a huge shortfall.
''We're balancing the education of Dunedin's youth with protecting the environment. In an ideal world, there wouldn't be this tension.''
Queen's High School principal Julie Anderson said the regulation changes had also been an issue at her school, but declined to comment further.
Ministry of Education school infrastructure group general manager Kim Shannon has acknowledged the issue, and said if present capital funding allocations for schools in Otago were inadequate to meet statutory requirements, the ministry would provide additional funding.
However, Mr Black said he was not aware of the additional funding offer.
''This is the first we have heard about this. We haven't been given any indication by the ministry that they would provide funding for property works other than the current formula-based regime.''
Dr Selvarajah said the schools appeared to accept the discharge limits in their resource consent applications, and there did not appear to be any difficulty meeting the installation deadline.
However, the ORC would consider extending the deadline by up to two or three years if they needed more time, he said.
