2 days ago
- Politics
- Otago Daily Times
Letters to the Editor: water, pennies and crocodiles
Today's Letters to the Editor from readers cover topics including the future of water in Dunedin, pensioners pinching pennies, and continuing to feed the crocodile. Surrey St residents keen to understand issues
Disbelief at the comments made by Dunedin City Council's general manager Three Waters and transition David Ward that our residents' claims contained "a spectacular amount of misinformation and falsehood" (ODT, 1.7.25).
After demanding that he and his support act get up here to see the problems after the 2024 flood he didn't even know the full history of Surrey St flooding being new to the job!
I'd like to know what falsehoods and misinformation.
Some of us have probably read more engineering reports, cost analysis and expert engineering opinions spanning 20 or more years regarding the Surrey St issue and the South Dunedin-wide problem than he's had time to locate. And just so we ratepayers and residents know he's speaking the truth we'd like to see the detailed engineering plans for the piping network upgrades and pumping station improvements plus the complete costings of the engineering works he stated.
Or are they still in the pipeline as usual? Surrey St Flood Action Group
Response from David Ward: Thank you for the chance to clarify my comments.
The Otago Daily Time s originally asked us to respond to a series of comments from residents that were worse than those eventually published.
All the claims were false, which is why I responded as firmly as I did.
The ODT then thankfully decided not to publish the worst of the comments, but I was not given the chance to modify my response, which was presented in full and out of context.
For the record, the problems in Surrey Str are caused by a known bottleneck in our wastewater system, and we have never denied this.
We feel for the residents there, and we have taken interim steps to protect their homes (such as the installation of non-return values, and pipe replacements elsewhere that ease pressure on the network including in Surrey St) while continuing to work hard to progress a permanent solution.
The issues involved are complex and the potential solutions expensive, requiring changes that affect our wider network, but we expect to be in a position to provide more information later this year.
Future Dunedin's full-page advertisement ( ODT , 11.6.25) includes in its "Policy Positioning" that "Future Dunedin will advocate for immediate action to protect $10b of assets at risk from flooding in South Dunedin."
In simple terms, that's equivalent to 10,000 x $1 million assets.
Given that 900 South Dunedin properties were flooded in the last severe flooding incident, is Future Dunedin able to share with the voting public how the figure of $10 billion was arrived at?
Andrew Simms responds: Two options presented by the South Dunedin Futures Programme describe the widespread retreat from large tracts of land in South Dunedin including housing areas, industrial and retail areas. Homes, factories, supermarkets and car dealerships gone.
Various reports estimate the value of this land and the assets upon it at between $7 billion and $10 billion.
The social cost of displacing 15,000 people is perhaps far greater.
South Dunedin is an essential part of Dunedin and much of the function of South Dunedin cannot be replaced.
The effective defence of South Dunedin can be achieved for a fraction of its value. Pennies are only pinched because they have to be
I noted the article on "penny pinching pensioners'' (ODT , 2.7.25) doing so because they have to, to ensure they can pay their power bills.
I'm in my 70s and live in a small flat on the hill. Like most flats in Dunedin it can be "cool" in winter.
My power bill is between $90- $100-plus every month.
What! I hear you say, how lucky is he.
But take into account there is no hot water charge in that and no heating charge in that (when I did use a heater I couldn't afford to pay that bill every month.)
So basically I am being charged for light bulbs (have energy saving ones), cooking a meal and time on my laptop (no TV).
The "small user" rate has gone and I am told by my power company to expect more rises in costs.
Watching successive governments and their approaches to ever rising costs in everything we need to use to survive there appears to be little interest in actually doing anything.
Big businesses like power companies seem to hold sway over all aspects of power generation, not the government.
The tail has wagged the dog for too long.
It is time for "open slather" to be applied to alternative power sources i.e. wind farms, solar farms, tide-generated energy, geothermal, biomass energy. We all see massive innovations in energy production overseas but here, well, let's wait and see. We have lost our innovative No 8 wire mentality that said "rip into it and get it done" and it's been replaced by apathy based on the fact no government and especially no power company is ever going to act in the best interests of their consumers. A sad indictment that we have allowed this to happen and I believe many pensioners will agree with me. Keeping on feeding the crocodile
Gerrard Eckhoff (Letters, 3.7.25) is a regular letter writer and contributor to the ODT .
Most of us know pretty much where he is coming from. His latest letter can probably be described as pushback against pushback against a recent tirade opposing capital gains tax, such as "stupid" left-wing "do-gooders" keep agitating for.
In doing so he has, in my opinion, shot himself in the foot. It demonstrates how shallow this analysis really is.
The astronomical increases in monetary asset values over five decades really bells the cat. Is he really suggesting that this mostly reflects increases in real wealth and productive capacity? Rather it is mostly asset inflation – unearned income (although not, apparently, according to our current prime minister). I would prefer to call it "fake wealth".
I'm inclined to agree with Mr Eckhoff that capital gains tax (or a wealth tax) would probably not fix the problem. It is the result of too much easy money for non-productive purposes. For example, if I want to borrow for some relatively risky enterprise I would probably be hit for about 2 percentage points more, than if I was leveraging the (fake) equity in my house to buy a relatively riskless investment property. The deregulated financial system just keeps on feeding the crocodile.
And by the way, we all know that the world is not particularly fair. Those camped on the Oval in tents or sleeping in cars certainly do. Whether it is meant to be is another matter. But at the very least we expect those who are handsomely rewarded to do something to justify it.
Abridged — Ed.
Address Letters to the Editor to: Otago Daily Times, PO Box 517, 52-56 Lower Stuart St, Dunedin. Email: editor@
