The Queenstown Lakes District Council says it is publishing wastewater testing data on its website so the community has "accurate information".
They are the first results from its Shotover wastewater treatment plant in Queenstown since treated effluent began being directly discharged into the Shotover River on Monday.
In a media statement yesterday, council infrastructure operations manager Simon Mason said the results, from samples taken at the end of the treatment process, were "well within" consented limits set by its regulator, the Otago Regional Council (ORC).
The results reflected a "well-operating treatment plant".
Sample results taken between that point and discharge into the river were not reliable indicators of the plant’s performance because they could be affected by "external factors" such as animal faeces from birds and dogs, which were known to cause spikes in E. coli readings.
However, the council would begin weekly testing upstream and downstream of the discharge point to ensure it had "a full understanding of any effects of the discharge", Mr Mason said.
Processed by an external laboratory, the results would be given to the ORC and published on the council’s website.
The council confirmed last week it would invoke emergency provisions in the Resource Management Act to begin discharging about 12,000cum of treated effluent into the river each day.
The decision followed ongoing breaches of the council’s resource consent, caused by a malfunctioning land disposal field, and a request by the Queenstown Airport Corporation to address a heightened risk of bird strike caused by ponding on the field.
Historical test results from the treatment plant, between 2018 and the present, have been on the council’s website since Wednesday.
Asked why it had begun proactively releasing the data, a council spokesman said it was a response to the community’s "strong interest" in the issue.
The data had previously been available to anyone who requested it, but would now be published online so members of the community could get "up-to-date and accurate information".
Mr Mason said routine daily testing at the plant would "quickly show if there were any issues with the quality of wastewater at the end of the treatment process".
The results of weekly samples, analysed by the external laboratory, were given to the ORC on a monthly basis, as its existing resource consent required.
