Region’s wastewater plants perform well

The region’s 10 municipal wastewater plants are performing well overall, according to a compliance report to this month’s Bay of Plenty Regional Council meeting.

The council’s Regulation, Monitoring and Operations committee received a report detailing the last three years performance of plants in the Western Bay of Plenty, Kawerau, Whakatāne and Ōpōtiki districts. Tauranga City Council and Rotorua District Council wastewater schemes were not included in the report, as they had recently been reported separately.

Overall performance was satisfactory, although there were some ongoing issues with receiving of compliance results, some exceedances for microbial counts and with the general maintenance and operation of some sites.

No enforcement action was required to be taken during the reporting period.

Regular inspections are conducted on wastewater treatment plants by Pollution Prevention Officers. Large treatment plants are inspected every six months while smaller rural plants are visited annually.

The committee heard that during the recent extremely wet weather experienced in the eastern Bay of Plenty, where considerable widespread flooding occurred, three of the Whakatāne District Council’s wastewater sites experienced problems. Both the Whakatāne and Ōhope wastewater ponds overflowed for a brief period, while the Edgecumbe system had a breach of the inlet pipe to the wastewater pond.

Whakatāne District Council undertook immediate emergency works to quickly address the problems.

The committee heard that overall, compliance was achieved for the various wastewater sites during most of the three year reporting period but there were some ongoing maintenance issues, such as weed growth, build-up of plastics and waveband erosion that should not occur. There were intermittent exceedances for microbiological consent conditions, mostly due to operational changes.

In all cases the District Council’s wastewater operators were advised of the issues, and had taken action to address the Regional Council’s concerns.

ENDS

© Scoop Media