Consents for wastewater system cost $3m so far
by John Jones - Gisborne Herald
Wednesday, 21 March, 2007
THE consent process for the upgrade of the city’s wastewater system has cost ratepayers $3 million so far and the upgrade could briefly take the District Council above its bank lending limit a hearing was told on Monday.
The council’s engineering and works manager Bill Turner said investigation, analysis and consideration had cost $3 million to the end of January.
The depreciated replacement value of the existing wastewater infrastructure comprising 202km of pipes of varying sizes was around $40.1 million, with an annual operating cost of around $3.25m.
The proposed new Biological Trickling Plant was expected to cost $24.1 million and would result in annual operating costs of $4.4 million in 2012, which would be 10 percent of the council’s annual rate requirement.
In addition to the wastewater treatment project, the council had other priority projects to address such as the development of a new landfill. The cost of flood repairs to the roading network in the 2005/06 year was in excess of $7 million, albeit heavily subsidised.
Mr Turner produced a table showing loan implications as set out in the 2004-12 LTCCP.
The GDC bankers had set a maximum debt level of $45 million and the council established $42 million as the desirable maximum debt.
The table showed that the loan profile would exceed the maximum debt in 2010 but that assumed all the work programmed would occur. Because that was not usually the case, the short period when the loan was above the bank limit was manageable.
Mr Turner said between 1993 and 2006 the council spent $8.3 million upgrading the stormwater system and $4.9m on the sewer system.
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