WDC set five-month deadline to upgrade wastewater plant | Northland News | Local News in Northland

The Whangarei District Council has been given five months to adopt an  upgrade of its wastewater treatment plant or face having its application to discharge partially treated sewage into a creek rejected.

 Independent commissioners who heard the council's application to increase the amount of minimally treated wastewater it can discharge from the plant also said the WDC's work to fix its Okara Pump Station "has done little more than transfer the problem" to the treatment plant.

But the district council says it is already making good progress to address the concerns. 

The WDC applied to the Northland Regional Council  to discharge up to 140,000 cubic metres a day from the Whangarei wastewater treatment plant  in Kioreroa Rd, 50,000cu m more than its daily limit. The higher discharge limit was sought as a result of a WDC upgrade designed to reduce overflows from its Okara Pump Station.

In a just-released interim decision, two independent commissioners   put the application on hold for five months.

The commissioners - Hamilton barrister Doug Arcus and Palmerston North consultant Hamish Lowe - earlier this month delivered a recommendation on the Okara station in which they were highly critical of the way the WDC had handled its wastewater discharges into Whangarei Harbour over the past two decades.

They reiterated those concerns in the decision on the wastewater treatment plant. Since January 2002, there have been at least 50 sewage spills in the Whangarei Harbour from the city's wastewater treatment system and the WDC is spending $50 million on the system over the next nine years.

 Among their reasons were the "significant" adverse effects from the proposed discharge and the fact it was contrary to relevant local authority and Resource Management Act provisions.

They want the WDC to  to provide "full treatment" for all the wastewater the plant receives.