On one side is South Wairarapa District Council, racing to resolve its sewerage treatment and dispersal crisis after losing its consent to connect more premises to an already overloaded system. On the other side are near neighbours of the proposed new land‑based dispersal site — residents who will live closest to the operation intended to stop discharges into waterways like the Ruamāhanga River.
In between sits Greater Wellington Regional Council (GWRC), the consenting authority that “put the plug” into the overloaded treatment system in 2023 and must now approve the upgraded facility planned for much of a new 74‑hectare site behind Pain Farm. And looming over all parties is a rapidly closing deadline: under an existing resource consent, the Martinborough Wastewater Treatment Plant (MWWTP) “must discharge treated wastewater to land by 2030.”
That’s only three years away.
SWDC first filed an application for consent to operate a land dispersal system, then deputy mayor Rob Taylor lodged an upgraded application for the new site. The council describes its application as “a minor change to the 2016 resource consents, to delete references to Pain Farm as the irrigation area, and an application for a new discharge consent to authorise irrigation of treated wastewater to the new site.”
But the neighbours’ group argues the new location and changed consent require proper, open public consultation — both with the wider Martinborough community and with those living closest to the dispersal area. They have filed an 11‑page “Request for Public Notification” with GWRC, seeking involvement before any formal consent is granted.
Their request makes clear that “nothing in it should be read as opposition to the discharge of treated wastewater to land in principle. The relief sought is procedural: that the application should be tested publicly, on complete information, before it is determined.”
They ask GWRC to:
- publicly notify the application under the Resource Management Act 1991;
- commission independent peer review of hydrological, soil science, hydrogeological and treatment‑performance evidence;
- and, if GWRC “declines to publicly notify, give limited notification … to the persons and agencies (affected) and publish the reasons for excluding any of them.”
In other words, the regional council should actively involve the public in a contested planning process.
The group notes that wastewater discharge applications for existing plants at Featherston and Paraparaumu have been publicly notified, allowing “any person to make a submission.” If GWRC “concludes that a continuation of an existing stream discharge at Featherston warrants public notification, but the creation of an entirely new land‑discharge at Martinborough does not, that conclusion requires an explicit, published, reasoned explanation” — and, they emphasise, “before the decision, not after it.”
In other words, so it can be contested. Perhaps not quite what SWDC wants.
The group also points out that the proposed land‑dispersal plan “does not end discharge to the Ruamāhanga” River, despite council suggestions, except “in all but exceptional circumstances.” SWDC’s 100 percent land‑discharge objective date is 2041, when a larger storage pond is planned. Even then, the system will spill into the Ruamāhanga and Wairarapa Moana during high‑water and flood events.
Altogether, the residents outline nine detailed “grounds” for how GWRC should conduct the application process.
In its current Long Term Plan (2025–2034), SWDC proposes $108 million in capital spending on new and upgraded wastewater assets as it seeks to meet consent requirements for its sewerage plants.
