Photos show the field on March 31 (above), on the day the disposal field was taken offline and treated wastewater began to be directly discharged into Queenstown’s Shotover River, and yesterday (below).
A council spokesman said soakage had now slowed and work was under way on options for helping it continue.
A count of birdlife on the disposal field was planned for next week, depending on the weather.
The disposal field was at the centre of a controversial decision by council managers last month to invoke emergency powers to directly discharge treated wastewater into the river for the first time since the field was commissioned in 2019.
The move followed legal action by the Otago Regional Council over the council’s ongoing breach of a resource consent caused by the over-spilling of treated effluent from the disposal field, and a request by Queenstown’s airport company to address increased bird strike risk at its nearby runway caused by the ponding.
For the past 12 days, about five Olympic-size swimming pools worth of effluent has been discharged directly into the landmark river as the Queenstown Lakes District Council uses emergency powers to bypass its consented, but failing, disposal field.
Yesterday, after publishing the first of its sampling results, the Otago Regional Council could not say whether it was satisfied with the quality of the discharge.
Otago regional councillor Michael Laws said it was "not good enough".
The community was extraordinarily concerned and the response from the ORC had been incompetent, he said.
"They were slow to react, slow to understand community sentiment in the Dunstan area — because it's not just Queenstown, but it's also Cromwell and all of the downstream that are affected by this — and are now extraordinarily slow to publish their monitoring surveys of the Queenstown discharge.
"Can you imagine if this was industry — a mine, a dairy farmer — that was involved in this kind of activity?
"ORC would be all over them like a rash.
"I loathe the way the ORC treats [local councils] when it comes to wastewater treatment plants.
"It's always with kid gloves and it's unacceptable."
Since 2021 the ORC has been detailing issues with the plant’s compliance.
Largely at issue was the plant’s disposal field, which was not absorbing the effluent released on to it, causing ponding to occur in breach of its consent.
But at times, the effluent has also been undertreated.
At the start of this year, with two abatement notices in place and 10 infringements issued over about 12 months, the ORC lodged an enforcement order claim with the Environment Court.
Then late last month, with the risk of bird strike looming for nearby Queenstown Airport due to the ponding in the disposal field, the plant’s operator decided to bypass the disposal field and discharge effluent directly into the river.
On April 3, the QLDC issued a statement saying their test results showed the discharge was "well within consented limits".
QLDC infrastructure operations manager Simon Mason said the results reflected a well-operating treatment plant.
The statement was met with disbelief by some in the community.
Video evidence appeared of discoloured water rushing into the river.
The smell was reportedly "horrendous".
Otago regional councillor Alexa Forbes, of Queenstown, said yesterday she too believed the ORC’s response to the "crisis" was not good enough.
"The community is extraordinarily concerned, and it should be.
"I don't think that we've necessarily got all the tools and levers in place that we need to have in place to ensure the environmental integrity of our rivers," Cr Forbes said.
The ORC "should be learning a salutary lesson" and dealing with councils before they got to the emergency point.
"We didn't start taking it urgently enough early enough, and now it's got the crisis point, and we're reaping those results," she said.
The ORC said yesterday in a statement it had set up a new water monitoring programme at six sites around the emergency discharge.
It also posted the results of the testing done in the area on March 31 and April 7.
ORC chief executive Richard Saunders yesterday told the Otago Daily Times he could not say whether the ORC was satisfied with the quality of the discharge into Shotover River.
A complete assessment of the most recent samples collected was still to be completed, Mr Saunders said.
"Should there be any concerns about these results we will raise them with QLDC."
Although the E. coli levels did not meet drinking water standards, Mr Saunders said the levels for compliance were set in the existing resource consent.
"That is what we are monitoring against," he said.
"We expect QLDC to achieve compliance against the levels set in the relevant resource consent.
"This is consistent with all [wastewater treatment plants] operating in the Otago region."
