Matatā residents are being invited to participate in the decision-making process which will determine how the town’s wastewater will be disposed of in future. The Whakatāne District Council is organising a public meeting for all Matatā residents (at the Matatā Rugby Club’s Division Street clubrooms at 6.00pm on Tuesday, 12 February) to discuss the options available and explain the implications of each option.

Council General Manager Infrastructure, Tomasz Krawczyk, says the meeting is the first step in a formal submission process which will establish which option the community supports.

“We now have estimated costs for two possible small-scale treatment and reticulation systems which would deal with the wastewater in low-lying areas of Matatā, where the high water table makes disposal via soakage fields difficult or, in some cases, ineffective,” Mr Krawczyk says. “While we need to communicate that information directly with the property-owners in those areas, any decision reached could also affect the wider community. We know that there has also been a view expressed that Council should reconsider a full-scale reticulation, treatment and disposal scheme serving the entire community, which is contrary to the decision reached by Council in September last year. The public meeting has been organised so that we can provide information about all of the possible options before we ask for formal submissions.”

Last year, the Council decided not to proceed with a full-scale wastewater reticulation scheme in Matatā “at this time”. Reasons for that decision included:

• Expert advice that there was no compelling reason for a full-scale reticulation scheme on the basis of a risk to human health;
• Significant cost escalations since the scheme was first proposed (in 2004), which would have increased rates to a level that many Matatā residents would consider unaffordable; and
• Issues with regard to the disposal of treated wastewater, which would probably have made any resource consent process for a full-scale wastewater scheme prolonged and costly.

Mr Krawczyk says that subsidy funding from the Ministry of Health is only available providing that any work undertaken is completed by 30 June, 2014. “That places a degree of urgency on any decision,” He says. “We encourage all residents to attend this meeting and then to follow-up by providing their views to Council so that we can gauge how the Matatā community wishes to proceed.”