Safe EnvironmentHow the Campaign Approaches Environmental Safety
Fourteen years of volunteer water sampling, one combined sewer overflow operating five times over its permit, and a clean-up program with a funded first phase.
The Kelvin outfall is a combined sewer overflow on the northern edge of the district. Its permit anticipates twelve discharge events a year. In 2024 it recorded sixty-one.
What the data says
Riverwatch has sampled the Rivermont watershed quarterly since 2011, at eleven fixed points, using the same laboratory and the same methodology throughout. That consistency is rare and it is what makes the series usable.
- Nitrate concentrations downstream of the Kelvin outfall have risen in eleven of fourteen years.
- Upstream, over the same period, they have not.
- Dissolved oxygen at the two downstream points falls below the ecological threshold after every recorded overflow event.
There is no serious dispute about the cause. There has been a long dispute about whose problem it is.
The first phase
The commitment is a funded first phase rather than a strategy document:
- Adopt the Riverwatch series as the district’s official record, and fund the laboratory contract so the monitoring no longer depends on donations.
- Direct the utilities levy’s environmental share — currently unallocated — at the Kelvin outfall.
- Publish the discharge count monthly, on the district website, next to the permit figure.
The third of those costs nothing and is the one the water company has objected to hardest. That is usually a sign it is the effective one.
What comes after
Storm-water separation on the Kelvin catchment is a decade-long capital project and will not begin in this term. What can begin is the drainage condition on new consent, which stops the problem growing while the long fix is funded.
Frequently Asked Questions
The questions this one comes back to at the surgeries, answered in the same words we use there.
The permits are regional but the outfalls, the drains and the parks are ours. The district can set the standard it buys to, can fund monitoring, and can refuse planning consent where drainage capacity is already exceeded. Those three levers account for most of what actually changes.
Adopting the Riverwatch quarterly dataset as the district's official environmental record; a clean-up program funded from the utilities levy, targeting the Kelvin outfall first; and rooftop solar on all 41 public buildings by 2032, costed at $6.8m with a nine-year payback.
By treating it as a capital planning question. Every district building due for roof replacement before 2032 gets solar at the same time, because doing both jobs on one scaffold is where the saving is. The schedule is published.
It is the whole basis of the evidence. The district has no continuous environmental record of its own — the fourteen-year series comes from volunteers with a laboratory contract. Without that, none of this would be arguable.
By being specific rather than principled. The vacant-property loophole costs the district more in lost rates than the drainage conditions we want to impose would cost developers. Both numbers are published, and the argument is had over those numbers.