Subsidies offer sewerage hope

The Far North District Council's utilities manager, Peter Johnson, said last week that the Ministry of Health had confirmed that it would subsidise between 50 and 90 percent of property owners' connection costs, depending on the level of subsidy the scheme attracted.

"If the approved subsidy level for the overall scheme is 90 percent, the cost to the householder to connect will be 10 percent, and if the subsidy level is 50 percent, the cost to the householder will accordingly be 50 percent of the actual connection cost," Mr Johnson said.

The subsidy applied to the costs of connecting from the property boundary and covered the costs associated with decommissioning septic tank systems.

A condition of the subsidy was that the council undertook the work required to connect the property to the reticulation scheme when the scheme was built.