A great Xmas present for Otago environment
Otago regional councillor Michael Laws is lauding today’s decision to refuse the Queenstown Lakes District Council a consent to discharge wastewater into the rivers of Central Otago as “absolutely the right decision, and a great Christmas present for the Central Otago and Lakes environment.”
Prior to the most recent local body
elections, Cr Laws voiced strong opposition to the proposed
consent and lodged a personal submission against the
proposal.
“ It just seemed an obscenity that our
environment would be legally
polluted because a
council had not got its infrastructure up to scratch.
The QLDC consent was all about legitimising its past errors,
and
Future inaction, by giving itself 35 years to
have more sewage “accidents” and
escape
prosecution. Negligence and neglect are not
accidents.”
Cr Laws said that it would have been
“morally impossible to impose stricter environmental
standards upon other water users in the region, whilst
allowing a local body to escape penalty for any pollution
that it caused.”
“ Today’s verdict sends a very
strong message to territorial authorities that
they will be held to the same standards as anybody else.
That’s no bad thing.
Polluting our relatively
pristine lakes and rivers must never be
legitimised.”