Meanwhile sources within the council are linking Mr Edmunds' resignation with the launching of an investigation, initially into the Sweetwater project, designed to supply water for Kaitaia from the aquifer at Sweetwater, west of Awanui, but now apparently in the process of being broadened. Council sources have told the Northland Age that other issues, including Kerikeri's proposed sewerage scheme (which may now be in question given the council's suspected failure to meet the deadline for a $7 million government subsidy), are now under the microscope.
Mr Carter claimed during last year's election campaign that $1.6 million of the $2.6 million spent to that point on the Sweetwater project could not be accounted for, and last week he said he had made little progress in determining what had become of that money. He was still asking questions, as he had been since his election in October, but had not received answers.
Testing of the bore, which the last council said would take place in July as a means of placating concerns it believed to be groundless, including the bore's productivity and effects on other bores in the vicinity, had still not been conducted.
Mr Carter said he was unable to say when those tests might be carried out. Sources within the council have told the Northland Age that the problem is a legal one regarding access to the site.
In the meantime Mr Carter has said the council has stopped spending on the project, and would not be spending another dollar until he and the council had a great deal more information than they had as of last week. He believed that no money had been spent on the project since the election, but could not categorically state that.
The Northland Age understands that a significant portion of the $2.6 million was paid for a commercial company, but Mr Carter said last week that it wasn't clear what that money had actually purchased.
"To my knowledge we don't own the site. I don't think we own anything," he said.
He was unable to explain why the council had not looked at other potential sites on council-owned land, why the offer of a site owned by Te Rarawa had not been accepted, or how the council had reached the conclusion that the privately-owned Sweetwater site was the only or best viable source of water.
He did say that he had no idea when water might be drawn from the bore, and indeed whether water would ever be obtained.
He went on to say that he had been aware of rumours prior to the election regarding incompetence at a high level within the council staff, but he had refused to give them credence or to rush to judgement.
"I heard what people, within the council and outside it, were saying, but quite frankly I didn't give them a lot of credibility," he said.
"I was keen to work with David and the other senior staff, and I wasn't going to leap to any conclusions. Unfortunately my concerns about Sweetwater appear to have been well-founded, and almost three months later I'm still pretty much in the dark. I still can't say where the $1.6 million I referred to in the election campaign has gone.
"When I asked for information [from senior staff] on the Monday after the election I was given a swag of documents rather than the answers I was expecting. Those documents haven't given me the information I need, but they have strongly suggested that my concerns were well-founded."
Mr Carter said the council had been appraised of the situation, and was unanimously supportive of the course that was now being followed.
"We have set in motion a process that will give us answers to a lot of questions that have simply gone unanswered to this point," he said.
"We will have a much clearer picture of our current situation, and what we need to do to progress, when that process has been completed."
