Fed-up hospitality businesses are not willing to accept the district mayor’s apology for Queenstown’s drinking water crisis which could result in residents facing months of having to boil water, and cost $30 million to fix.
"I want to pass on my sympathies to the community and businesses," Queenstown-Lakes District Mayor Glyn Lewers said yesterday.
Twenty-three cases of infection from the parasite Cryptosporidium had been confirmed by Friday afternoon, an increase of two in the 24 hours to yesterday.
Dr Susan Jack, Southern Medical Officer of Health, said today that a source of infection had yet to be identified, but investigations were ongoing.
On Wednesday evening, national water regulator Taumata Arowai served a compliance order to the council for its Two Mile water treatment plant, which does not have a protozoa barrier to stop Cryptosporidium entering the water supply.
A boil water notice must stay in place until a protozoa barrier was installed or another supply was found, the regulator said.
The area’s other treatment plant, Kelvin Heights, had a protozoa barrier but there were doubts it was working, the regulator said.
Once the regulator was satisfied it was operating, the boil water notice for the plant could be lifted.
"We will have to defer non-core projects, go back to basics."
Five systems in the district did not have the filter systems in place, he said.
The council had been progressively upgrading and that work was being brought forward.
The Exchange Cafe owner Ryan Lelievre said it had been a scramble to keep the business operating since the boil water notice was issued on Monday.
"We found out about it when the alert went out, saw it on social media, but nobody from council contacted us directly.
"This council’s been really awol," he said.
"I don’t know where the current mob are.
"This council has forgotten its Queenstown community."
Wife and co-owner Sam Lelievre said to find out the situation had been caused "by their negligence just makes everyone even more angrier".
"If we weren’t doing stuff properly ourselves they’d come down on us like a tonne of bricks."
The combination of roadworks, parking price hikes and the water crisis meant locals were not coming to town, she said.
Rees Hotel chief executive Mark Rose said the council should have prioritised the protozoa filters on its Queenstown water supply.
"How would you have a filter on Arrowtown, a town of 3000 people, and not a filter on Queenstown, which is the hub of the district, where the majority of the people live and millions of tourists come to.
"I mean how does that work?"
Mr Rose said the council should increase rates, or at least tie them to the consumer price index to enable it to better fund core infrastructure.
Destination Queenstown chief executive Mat Woods said the situation highlighted the need for the introduction of a bed tax.
"In a district that has 50,000 people and 5.1 million visitors a year, how can central government help us with that?
"Because we can’t fund it with 50,000 people [ratepayers]."
Mr Woods said the situation was a "real inconvenience for our visitors and our operators", but he was yet to see people cancelling trips to Queenstown.
Mr Rose said his hotel was experiencing "more cancellations than normal, but no-one’s actually saying why they’re cancelling".
A business response group comprising the council, Destination Queenstown and the Queenstown Business Chamber of Commerce — established during Covid — was reprised yesterday.
Its main role was to streamline communication to businesses, a council spokesman said.
