True cost of Queenstown water emerging

A significant push to improve the Queenstown Lakes District Council’s knowledge of the aging Queenstown water network had come at a price,” QLDC infrastructure services general manager Mark Kunath said.

A report to the QLDC utilities committee on Tuesday identified that the council was running ‘over budget’ in the cost of delivering water and waste water services for Queenstown.

‘We think the overrun will be in the vicinity of $800,000 which can be viewed as the true costs of running the Queenstown systems. We are getting close to knowing the extent of the challenge,’ Mr Kunath said.

The Queenstown system was a lot older than others in the district and assumptions about maintenance, and in some cases renewal, had needed revisiting as a result of better knowledge.

“For the last 18 months we have been improving the state of our knowledge of the system and the true costs of operating and maintaining it. We are learning all the time and that is coming at a cost,” Mr Kunath said.

Compounding the issue of age was the high pressures that were applied to the system due to the development of property high above lake level.

“At the time the pipes were put in, the engineering knowledge was not as good as it is now and the result is a higher degree of ‘wear and tear’ than forecast,” Mr Kunath said.

Another factor was the discovery of sections of old asbestos-cement pipe which was found to be at, or close to, the end of life.

“There is an element of catch-up about the work we are having to undertake. Going forward we should be in a much better position to more accurately forecast the cost of ensuring Queenstown has robust water and waste water systems to service its community,” Mr Kunath said.

A new asset management software system for capturing the network information had been a necessary investment. In turn that would also ensure that in the future the council could be in a position, short of an ‘act of god’, to operate a proactive rather than reactive service.