Media Release

Release date: Wednesday 9 December 2015

Avoid Waimata and Turanganui Rivers

People are advised to avoid swimming, paddling or gathering seafood from the Waimata and Turanganui Rivers for up to 5 days after wastewater leaked into the Waimata River last night.

Council was alerted at 8.40pm to a fault with the Russell Street pump station, where approximately six cubic meters of wastewater had leaked into the river.

“We’re extremely disappointed that the systems to prevent sewage from overflowing from have failed,” says operations group manager Barry Vryenhoek.

“There was a fault in the level of the sensors that trigger the pumps to operate and a mechanical fault with the emergency release valve.

“We’re responsible for making sure the system works and we apologise that this has happened,” says Mr Vryenhoek.

“The leak was sporadic over two hours and the tide was going out when it occurred, so it’s likely that any contamination has been diluted and dispersed.

“Avoiding the water for 5 days is a precaution.”

Samples of the water have been taken from the river at Russell Street, Grant Road and Gladstone Road Bridge to test for bacteria levels.

Mr Vryenhoek says the results will be available on Friday, “We’ll let the community and water users know when the levels have returned to normal.”

An advisory notice of the discharge was emailed out to interest groups and notice on Council’s Facebook page last night. Signs were put up at public access points today.

Engineers responded to the call out and stopped the discharge within an hour.

“We’d like to thank the two people who reported the discharge so that our contractor was able to fix the problem quickly.”

The sensors that trigger the pumps were able to be rectified straight away.

The pump station has a back-up storage tank that collects any overflow from the station. The emergency release valve from this tank to the river was faulty and was replaced today.

“Alarm systems and mechanical functions at all other pump stations are also being checked.

Earlier this year, a pump station overflow in the Wainui Stream was caused by human error. Council put in place stringent procedures following the incident.

“The pump stations undergo maintenance weekly and scheduled upgrades are being made.”

“We’re taking this very seriously, the water utilities team are assessing the circumstances of this fault and how we’ll prevent it from occurring again.”

A discharge like this is prohibited under the new Freshwater Plan regulations.

Environmental services staff are investigating if any enforcement action is necessary.

“We’ll provide the community updates on the investigation and action going forward.”

ENDS

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