That was the general feeling of members of the Luggate community who made submissions yesterday on a Fulton Hogan plan to build a solar drying plant near the township to process sludge from Wanaka's Project Pure sewerage plant.
The resource consent hearing, in front of independent commissioners Kevin Rolfe, David Whitney and John Lumsden, heard verbal submissions from residents.
Graham Halliday, representing the Luggate community, opposed the plan to truck the sludge 7km from the Queenstown Lakes District Council's Project Pure wastewater facility, next to Wanaka Airport, to the Fulton Hogan site. He said the council should have consulted the community before entering into a commercial arrangement with Fulton Hogan.
Mr Halliday said the community's preference was for the new plant to be located on the Project Pure site.
''Carting to a plant 6km away doesn't make engineering sense, doesn't make financial sense, doesn't make environmental sense.''
Also representing the Luggate community, Judy Thompson said she was a registered nurse and very familiar with blood and body fluids.
''I believe concern about sewerage biosolids is not a culture of fear but a culture of common sense.''
Ms Thompson produced an email from a company that has sold 124 of the WendeWolf solar drier systems being proposed for Luggate. It indicated 85% of the plants world-wide were stationed beside wastewater treatment plants.
''Considering the overwhelming rejection of the proposal by the local community, it is disappointing and a deficiency in the process that further independent investigation of location was deemed not relevant,'' she said.
Wanaka Community Board chairwoman Rachel Brown said she was in favour of the plant but asked why there were no Wanaka people - ''whose poo we are talking about'' - at the hearing.
She believed the community's fear of sludge needed to be addressed.
Ms Brown said she visited the Project Pure plant and found the sludge, even before it was dried, to be ''beautiful manure''.
''I would like to take it home and put it on the garden.''
She would prefer to have the drying plant as a neighbour than a dairy farm.
Farmer Allan Kane told the hearing of his concerns about the visual impact of the plant building - a glasshouse 96m long by 12.8m wide with a maximum height of 4.8m. The glass would produce a glare and the building would need to be screened to a height of 6m.
The commissioners spent some time discussing the type of screening that could be employed, including a row of radiata pines, and before concluding the hearing, visited additional sites to determine the plant's likely visual effect.
