Four organisations with concerns about Wānaka’s Bullock Creek are “extremely disappointed” by Queenstown Lakes District Council’s (QLDC) response to their request for short term actions to protect the freshwater creek.

Friends of Bullock Creek - speaking also on behalf of Guardians of Lake Wānaka, Wānaka Lake Swimmers Club, and Touchstone - asked council for “positive short term actions to protect Bullock Creek and Lake Wānaka in the absence of mitigating investment in stormwater infrastructure”.

Their requests varied in magnitude from asking council to empty and clean the existing sediment pond annually, to asking council to stop further urban growth south of the headwaters of Bullock Creek.

This followed QLDC’s deferral of a $6M investment in Stone Street stormwater assets for seven years (blamed on the council’s liability in historic leaky home cases in Queenstown), which the groups said would be a major setback for its mandate of protecting Bullock Creek and the wetlands.

Read more: Groups demand action on stormwater mitigation

Stormwater overflowing the Alpha Series subdivision retention pond and heading for Bullock Creek. PHOTO: QLDC

QLDC chief executive Mike Theelen responded to their request last month, saying there would be an opportunity this year to review the capital investment programme as part of the 2024-34 Ten Year Plan development.

“At this stage, it is not possible to say what decisions will be made in respect of Bullock Creek, but councillors are well aware of the issues you and your group have raised,” he said.

In response to the groups’ request that council stop further urban growth south of the headwaters of Bullock Creek until it has invested in sustainable stormwater infrastructure, Mike said the area “has already been zoned for development and as such it is not possible to simply cease development in the area”.

“Every effort is being made to ensure that stormwater systems that service any new development appropriately mitigate adverse effects associated with both the quantity and quality of the run-off.”

FOBC committee member Nancy Latham said the groups were “extremely disappointed with QLDC's lack of urgent and substantive commitment to protecting our fresh water bodies in the Roy's Bay catchment”.

The spring-fed Bullock Creek runs through the Wānaka township and into Lake Wānaka, and when urban development (Alpha Series) began south of the creek’s headwaters in 2015 the creek was ”pristine and stable,” FOBC said.

By May this year, an Otago Regional Council report, ‘State and Trends of Rivers, Lakes and Groundwater in Otago 2017 – 2022’ identified Bullock Creek as the most polluted freshwater body in the Upper Lakes Rohe.

Nancy said the groups will continue to work on gaining support for local government investment for freshwater protection, and increasing public awareness of the implications of QLDC's lack of investment in stormwater infrastructure.