Tauranga City Councillors have heard emergency repair costs to the Mount Maunganui Hot Pools have ballooned out to $2.3 million – largely due to years of neglect.

Repairs to the leak that closed the pools in May this year were originally estimated to cost between $1 and $1.5 million.

The estimate was made in a hurry and based on a ‘guestimation' of the state of pipe work no-one had seen for nearly 20 years.

Things turned out to be a lot worse than expected.

While $2.3 million may seem a lot to fix a leaking pipe, the repair process unearthed a facility on its last legs, largely because of an ongoing lack of maintenance by the business entities that have run the pools on the council's behalf.

There were no plans of pipes or where they went.

Previous experience showed the pipes stacked in channels.

The pipe work all went to the pipe room under a concrete floor that has to be removed to undertake any repairs.

After a leak was discovered in late May, the decision was made in early June to replace all the pipe work in one closure.

However, during the repairs process a number of issues arose:

• The switchboard was declared unsafe by Opus and replaced at a cost of $15,622.
• Changes to the treatment system required a concrete base and fencing for a chlorine tank at a cost of $22,874.
• The women's showers pipework was replaced at a cost $11,438 after failing a pressure test.
• The salt water intake and heat exchanger pipes were repaired and flushed for $12,077.
• Repairs to heat exchangers cost $10,442.
• Replacement of the bore pipe cost $20,681.

There were also add-ons, such as additional fill costing $16,700, poor ground conditions requiring AP20 under pipes and concrete encasement of some pipes for $15,675.

It cost an extra $7225 to replace more concourse and pipes than originally thought was needed.

Mainzeal was the main contractor, Davis Langdon was the project manager and Rawlinsons the quantity surveyor.

The size of the overrun (leak) was known late August and the project didn't go out to tender to save time.

The consensus was not much would have been saved by doing so and the pools would have been closed for months more than they were.

Councillors were on the whole philosophical about the blowout when they received the presentation about the pools on Monday at the council's projects and monitoring committee meeting.

Catherine Stewart wanted the council to hire an auditor to go through everything, but the motion was lost.

'The thing we need to learn from this is really the difference between the public sector and the private sector and how they operate,” says Mayor Stuart Crosby.

'For example, the hot pools have been out of council management for some period of time.

'It was H20 and then LeisureCo and now TCAL, which is more public sector orientated.

'From my experience dealing with the private sector, they don't do things like asset management plans.

'They use it, they wear it out, and when it breaks, they fix it – and that's effectively what's happened to the hot pools.

'As we look ahead, particularly with the pool network and our asset network with TCVL as an example, we need to be careful we get that balance right of how the private sector operate using their commercial expertise to drive things a lot harder, versus protecting the public asset at the end of the day.

'When we give things away we need to give them away with certain criteria, that we need that entity to look after them on behalf of council and the ultimate owners – the ratepayers.”

There are no holy grails, no silver bullets, says Councillor Bill Faulkner.

By moving to the private sector we achieved something in the way of revenue, but the price we paid has been in the maintenance.

'The lesson perhaps we could learn is the sooner council gets out of all social services the better,” says Bill.

Wayne Moultrie drew attention to Page 29 of the TCAL project briefing paper, which in a bullet point admitted the pools in 2006 had no resource consent and were non complying in a conservation zone.

'They knew since 2006 that there was no resource consent for the existing facilities and with that knowledge they went ahead and sought a resource management act consent,” says Wayne.

'That I find absolutely mind blowing, that directors of TCAL, knowing that there was no resource consent, could seek resource consent on the basis that that was in existence when in fact it wasn't.”

He will be seeking a written report on the issue for the chief executive.

In her right of reply on the audit issue, Catherine Stewart said the request was not a conspiracy theory or witch-hunt, but it was about being accountable to the ratepayers.

'The millions that have been wasted on planning for pools that have not had resource consent – that's been going on for many years and millions spent unnecessarily down that track.

'The ratepayers are wondering what's going on.

'Having an independent audit would reveal that.

'As a lay person, putting pipes under the ground doesn't seem like rocket science to me.

'This audit cost would be one per cent of the contract – very small in the realms of the bigger picture.”

Repair works at the hotpools.