Bruce MacMillan from Brookvale Rd Havelock North says the Hastings District Council new Bore 3 is flooding his property. Photo/Duncan Brown
Bruce MacMillan from Brookvale Rd Havelock North says the Hastings District Council new Bore 3 is flooding his property. Photo/Duncan Brown
A Havelock North man is irate that a stream on his property is being flooded by water discharged from Brookvale Bore 3 and that he was not told that this would be taking place when he bought the property.
The Hastings District Council, however, says it is within its rights to carry out the activity.
Bruce MacMillan moved into his Brookvale Rd property across the road from the bore in February this year, but said that when he ordered a LIM (Land Information Memorandum) report in December before purchasing the house with six hectares of land attached he was not told that any future work would be carried out on Bore 3.
"The bores have now been activated - we would never have bought here if we had known this was going to happen."
He said that along with not being told that the discharging would be taking place, the issue was that when the water was released it flooded the stream, causing the banks to degrade, and left fetid pools of dirty water in the stream after it had been through.
In addition, when the water was flushed through it was of a quantity and pressure that it flowed down to where this stream intersected with another, causing the water to be pushed up the other stream against its normal flow.
"When we first saw the place the bore was not active - it just looked like a changing room, but since then science fiction-like devices have been added on and then the floods started down our stream."
As well as being concerned about how the water flows were altering the stream banks, he said he was concerned about the quality of the water, to the extent that he had started collecting his own samples for testing.
"I wanted to plant trees along the stream, and maybe introduce trout fingerlings, but am now concerned that the environment will be toxic - sometimes it was yellow and frothy and stinking like chlorine, and other times it was discoloured and rusty looking.
"We came to this place thinking we had a nice little spot to do up - we thought we had found a dream but now it's turning into a nightmare."
He said he wanted assurances that the water was safe, and he wanted the council to consider diverting the water discharge away from the stream.
Hastings District Council water services manager Brett Chapman said his understanding was that Mr MacMillan had not long moved into the property and that he would have seen all the work going on prior to that.
He added that the discharges that were taking place were consented.
"The discharges are permitted through regional council rules.
Photo/Duncan Brown
"They are discharges of clean water from the groundwater to surface water, there is no chlorine or anything else in the water, and it only happens as part of the process of the bore warming up after it's being turned off. Because it is operating most of the time, it's not happening often."
He said if Mr MacMillan had any concerns about the water quality it may be a case of contaminants coming from another source and he needed to get in touch with the regional council, either directly or through the pollution hotline.
"If the regional council had the same concerns they would deal with us."
As for not telling Mr MacMillan that the work on the bore and the discharges would be happening, he said the council was carrying out legitimate work that they were entitled to as landowners.
"None of the consents for this work require us to talk to landowners."
As for the absence of information on the LIM report a council spokesperson said the water infrastructure work undertaken on council-owned land in Brookvale Road opposite Mr MacMillan's property did not require a resource consent.
"We progressed the building work under emergency provisions to bring Bore 3 on to the reticulation during the excessively hot weather period and have sought building consent compliance retrospectively as allowed under the building act.
"Therefore there would be no information relating to this work required on a LIM."