Brian Rogers Rogers Rabbits www.sunlive.co.nz

Twenty years is quite a long time. Last century, in fact.

Twenty years ago, a new TV programme, ‘Father Ted', had just started and it was hilarious.

My kids were in primary school. Daughter ran in the cross country at Te Puna School. I still had the old yellow dog from Taranaki. Jim Bolger was Prime Minister.

Twenty years ago, The Weekend Sun hadn't quite been invented, but we'd published the first editions of Waterline Magazine in the garage. Cave Creek had a disaster.

Supergroove and the Mutton Birds were the hottest bands around. Shihad was still Shihad and hadn't yet been called anything else, then Shihad again. ‘Once Were Warriors' won the best film soundtrack. Cellphones were bricks. Newsweek announced that the new-fangled internet would fail. NZ won the America's Cup for the first time.

But most importantly, 20 years ago, a few of us living in Te Puna were campaigning for modern sewage treatment and a cleaner harbour. The old septic systems were outmoded, unreliable and many residents couldn't be trusted to keep them functioning right.

We had meetings. We called politicians and talked with councils. The facsimile machine ran hot. Something had to be done.

But that was all that happened. Talk. Very little changed in the way we handled our waste.

I remember pleading with one of the district councillors: 'Let's not just talk about this for 10 or 20 years and find that it's taken decades to get anything achieved.”

The worst thing then, in my mind, is that we'd still be thrashing around in our own waste in say, 2015.

There was talk about Omokoroa getting a sewage pipeline to the Tauranga treatment station.

'Why couldn't we tap it that?” seemed like a perfectly reasonable question. 'Because Tauranga and the iwi won't allow any connections in between,” came back the predictably hopeless bureaucratic answer.

Despite the pipeline being built massively to over-capacity; to allow for exactly this sort of extra demand. And despite my iwi friends, seeming puzzled they'd been fingered for putting up road blocks.

'What about a local treatment station?” seemed like the next reasonable alternative.

'There aren't enough houses to contribute to make it viable,” was the equally deflating answer.

'So why doesn't the council start a targeted rate of some sort now, so one day there'll at least be a kick-off fund for a local treatment station?”

'Because we can't trust the council to keep its hands off the money, and not pinch it for something else,” was the unbelievable response from an elected member.

It read like a script from a ‘Father Ted' episode.

So very little happened. Experts from the regional council ran around doing tests and more tests, telling us again what we already knew. That some septic tanks were a problem. They came up with a tricky dicky scoring system, to rate each septic system.

Unfortunately, it related diddly-squat to the real sources of the pollution. Very good at testing, some of these experts. Not so good at actually changing anything, it turns out.

A few stop-gap measures were achieved. The regular pumping of septic systems was introduced and some of the worst polluting systems were forced to be maintained.

Some of those were not actually on the waterfront but a block or two away. One defiant old bugger up the hill and around the corner proudly announced to the regional council official that there was nothing wrong with his septic tank. He was a long way from the water, the tank had been there 25 years and never needed emptying! Closer inspection found, when the lid was lifted, it was so chocker they could walk on it. That property's waste had been bypassing the tank and floating off untreated into the harbour. For years.

So a band-aid answer was found. Pump the tanks. The talk continued and I gave up pushing for a proper waste disposal system.

The Omokoroa pipeline came and went. Whooshing tantalisingly close to our back doors. No, we couldn't tap in. This was a private party. Hugely Government-funded, to add insult to injury.

Other settlements got their waste systems, including Maketu. They scored some dosh from the regional council, on the grounds of deprivation.

Ironic, that the districts deemed poorer are considered somehow a higher priority. And I thought a turd was a turd. The real slap in the face for Te Puna, is that those supposedly 'better off” residents have actually been paying a whole lot more in rates, on the basis that their properties are valued higher. So how come you pay more and get less? Exactly who is being administered deprivation?

This week, 20 years after my almost fruitless one-man campaign to clean up the harbour and voluntarily change the way we treat our waste, there is a dawning of sense.

More meetings have been called. The council wrote some letters. It seems, finally some common sense has prevailed and after a lot more talk, the Western Bay of Plenty District Council hopes the 130 or so houses at the far end of Te Puna west, can be piped into the Omokoroa pipeline. At a cost.

This week we shuffled along to a meeting in the old hall. Those of us arriving last missed out on the cushy seats. We got the hard wooden ones at the back. (More deprivation).

We listened to experts and politicians tell us what we already know. We need to do something. I think the community unanimously agrees. It's just the price that needs sorting.

They're suggesting each household stump up with between $16,000 and $18,000 up front, plus about $800 annually.

That sounds like quite a lot, to shift poop from Snoddy Rd to the city. Crikey, even if you couriered it to Chapel St, assuming you pooped once a day (and your aim was good enough to land it in a $2 courier bag) then you'd get it delivered (dunny) door to door for 27 years before the cash ran out.

Nah, there must be a better way! I'm sure the courier driver would agree.

Some of the locals had questions. Why are we expected to contribute to a pipeline that is already paid for? Especially since the Government chipped into that scheme.

Why isn't the regional council treating every at-risk district the same? Why is Te Puna being discriminated against?

Mayor Ross Paterson says the regional council has been asked to contribute. It will be very interesting to see what comes of this.

One old guy at the meeting pointed out that not all residents are flush with twenty grand stuffed under their mattress, to afford such a large up-front cost.

Dad and I sit quietly at the back, on the hard wood chairs, trying to imagine how much would be stashed in a targeted rate account now, if we'd been ferreting away for two decades.

And wondering why now, the obvious answer sits in front of us, but it's taken an absurd 20 years to reach the conclusion and for the bureaucrats to get their sh** sorted.

To be fair, the pollies and the engineers and the experts have communicated well and put a lot of effort into making the whole scheme easy for us laymen to follow.

The answer seems clear, it seems a logical and efficient system, only the village needs to be treated with parity, compared to other communities that have been subsided for similar schemes.

So the episode of ‘Father Ted' continues.

Here we are in exile on Craggy Island; waste creeping around us. The mainland has a pipeline running right past us. It's taken two decades of shagging around to get the okay to connect.

I'm sure the councils will find a way to make it all happen, without bankrupting half the residents?