Secret meetings wrong move on Lake Horowhenua

Horowhenua District Council is making the wrong move by proposing secret meetings with a tiny number of invited members as the main community consultation, Greens Co-Leader Russel Norman says.

Dr Norman says he is pleased that, according to Levin’s Daily Chronicle yesterday, a proposed 13 member committee will include representatives of local iwi, Horizons Regional Council and the Department of Conservation. However he is worried the council will use the committee in a “Yes Minister” kind of way, in other words as an excuse for inaction and to try to keep its problems secret.

“It’s great Horowhenua has a multi-million dollar plan to upgrade Levin’s sewerage scheme after the recent Lake Horowhenua treatment plant overflow, and it’s great it wants to consult. But I’m worried the ‘sewage working party’ will be used by the council in the same way a similar committee was after the 1998 overflow. The council needs to listen to community advice,” Dr Norman says.

“The last committee made some good suggestions including to buy land to relocate the plant and to improve consultation with local iwi, but the council did not follow all the committee’s advice and ignored concerns from local iwi and others that the plant might overflow again.

“There’s a saying that if you keep doing the same things you keep getting the same outcome.”

Dr Norman renewed his call for a public meeting in Levin so the council’s waste management practices could be publicly debated by all concerned.

After the sewerage ponds overflowed last month, Horizons Regional Council tests have shown high levels of e.coli in groundwater and the “wetted area between the sewage treatment plant and lake”, according to information the Green Party has obtained under the Official Information Act.