Greater efficiency, more capacity for Rosedale plant

Mayor George Wood officially opened major extensions to North Shore City's wastewater treatment plant at Rosedale today (March 30, 2004).

The fourth stage of the council's long-term upgrading programme has been completed on time and $3m under the $35m budget. The three-year Stage 4 project further improves the 42-year-old plant's capacity, efficiency and odour-busting ability.

North Shore City Council is planning to spend a further $100m upgrading the treatment plant over the next ten years, having already invested $87m since 1992.

Mayor Wood says the plant upgrade is in addition to the city's $210m, 20-year Project CARE programme, aimed at improving beach water quality. "Already this upgrade and previous projects are beginning to pay real dividends," he says.

"We have met all the requirements of our resource consents as part of Project Rosedale, including UV (ultra violet) disinfection and treating all peak flows; we have reduced the risk of pond overflow, and we have significantly reduced the smells from the plant." Included in the Stage 4 upgrade are:

* An ultra violet (UV) disinfection plant has been built to kill bacteria before the highly-treated effluent is discharged to sea

* Systems can now cope with the heaviest of inflows following storms

* The smelly and outdated trickling filters have been taken out of service

* Other odour-eating technologies such as biosolids treatment have been introduced

* The storage capacity of the (oxidation) ponds has increased.

In his speech to guests at an official ceremony today to mark the completion of the Stage 4 extensions, Mr Wood said the city was putting a huge effort and millions of dollars into improving all the city's wastewater systems, from pipe networks to storage facilities, and at the plant itself.

"We need to maintain these improvements to efficiency and capacity, despite the additional pressures that come from population growth, more development, higher density housing, more vehicles, and even the spectre of climate change.

"All these factors will have an impact on the quality of the output from this plant, and the quality of the water at our beaches," he says.

George Wood says the city can't let up as it is required by the ARC to steadily improve standards and systems, and "we will not shirk from that". The treatment plant was first built and commissioned in 1962 by the former North Shore Drainage Board, and served a more scattered population living in the various local authorities then in existence.

With the subsequent rapid growth of what is now North Shore City, a number of upgrades have greatly improved the capacity and efficiency of the plant, to keep pace with the demand and the growing community's ever-increasing environmental expectations.

© Scoop Media

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