Neighbour cuts shared water supply over wedding venue fight

A pair of Dunedin neighbors – one with reticulated water and the opposite without – have stopped sharing water after a dispute over a marriage venue.

The saga is anticipated to be aired at Tuesday’s meeting of the Dunedin City Council. The body of workers has endorsed an “exceptional water connection” at the Ocean Grove assets to be declined.

The forty-one-hectare Tomahawk Rd belongings owned by Mark and Julie Caldwell turned into zoned rural and located outside the metropolis’s water supply.

It acquired water from the neighboring assets, which had town water deliver the connection. The neighbor told Stuff he used to own the Caldwells’ assets, but the plumbing was hooked up by a previous owner who spent his time among the 2 homes. He turned the water delivery to the Caldwells’ belongings, which borders Tomahawk Lagoon, off in February after becoming irritated they had been granted council consent to run a marriage venue there.

“They assumed the water changed into theirs. However, it wasn’t,” the neighbor, who declined to be named, said. The man said he bought the Caldwells the property in 2016 and informed them about the water supply, which fed through a pipe from his assets and down a long gravel driveway.

He stated that the settlement to proportion water ended while the Caldwells proceeded with their plans to function as a wedding venue. The plan has been hostile, using dozens of other residents within the coastal network. However, a petition did now not forestall it from going ahead.

“It has not been handled very well,” the Caldwells’ neighbor stated. Mark Caldwell advised Stuff he was not in a function to talk about the water saga and had yet to see the schedule for the council’s meeting on Tuesday.

“It is just one of these situations which have taken place.” A Land Information Memorandum (LIM) report for the belongings referred to it turned into unserviced and now not entitled to reticulated servicing from the council.

When the Caldwells carried out a land-use consent application to establish a wedding venue for as many as one hundred fifty humans, their utility said the website online had self-serviced water delivery.

But a council listening to committee selection, released in January, stated that the consent situation changed into that the “applicant should display that the assets are self-sufficient in terms of provision of good enough water and firefighting water components to guide the activity.”

After their neighbor had stopped using the water supply, the couple contacted the council, which hooked up a temporary hosepipe from every other family. At the same time, they carried out a permanent solution.

A council record notes enormous new water use at the belongings given the economic hobby now allowed there. It no longer advocated the council approve the brand new water delivery as it was “not of strategic benefit to Dunedin.”

While the abisttheter to the belongings has been available, the council could deploy a one hundred eighty-meone-hundred-eighty-meterd price it approximatelcost00. The costs would have to be recouped if the council approved the new water delivery.