The Napier Wastewater Plant flooded on the day of the cyclone, sweeping away a worker's ute.
OPINION
We are heading towards the six-month mark in our recovery from Cyclone Gabrielle.
This invisible milestone will mean different things to different people. Some will look at how much there is still to achieve and others will feel they have come a long way since that day in February.
So many people lost so much due to the cyclone. Lifelines were decimated. Infrastructure destroyed.
For Napier, the largest community asset affected was the wastewater treatment plant.
As much as there is still work to do, it’s a good time to look at what happened there and what’s been done to return the asset to the community in full working order.
The wastewater treatment plant is the kind of place we only think about when it’s not working. We rely on it being there, but it’s not a place we discuss at barbecues. We don’t show it off to our visitors.
Many don’t know how it works, they just trust that it does. But its successful operation has a huge effect on our community, our industries and economy, our environment, our health and safety.
When we lost it on February 14, every household was affected.
Getting it back in operation is something our whole community should celebrate, and the journey of getting to this point should be something we all take pride in.
At 9.30am on Tuesday, February 14, Colin, who runs the wastewater treatment plant, received a phone call to say the stopbanks nearby had failed and floodwater was heading towards Awatoto.
On-site staff switched all power off to the plant. If they hadn’t, there is a risk fire or electrical malfunction would have had a big impact.
By 10.30am the water was so high there was no way of driving out of the site.
One of our staff was working in the dataroom and his car was swept away.
Four people were left at the plant; three in the upstairs control room. An electrician was stuck in his van on the opposite side of the site. By then, the water was well over a metre above the road.
With all telecoms down by this stage, one of our councillors alerted Fire and Emergency NZ that people may still be on site at the WWTP.
At 5.30pm FENZ staff arrived on site in an aluminium dinghy. They collected the three men from the tearoom balcony and the electrician from his van.
At 9.30pm that same day, divers arrived at the plant and set about opening the bypass valve.
It took 45 minutes of turning the valve to get the job done.
For over an hour the divers were under floodwater in the pitch dark working by feel.
If that valve hadn’t been opened, wastewater would have been discharged across land rather than out to sea.
Those two decisions - to turn off the power in the first few minutes and open the valve later that night - saved a lot of additional damage and potential public harm.
I’ve visited the wastewater treatment plant a number of times since the cyclone. I’m always stunned by the visible reminders of how high the floodwater was throughout the plant.
It’s hard to comprehend. Since then every component has been cleaned, checked and repaired.
In some instances they’ve been rebuilt, and regrown, in the case of the bacteria that lives within the two biological trickling filters (BTFs).
For the first few weeks the team couldn’t access the site until the floodwaters drained away.
They then worked long shifts with the first goal to get the miliscreen back working.
That happened on April 4 and all of us let out a collective sigh of relief. Up until 2014 when the BTFs were built, our wastewater was treated just with miliscreens that filter out solid waste, which goes to landfill.
With the BTFs, 300 litres goes through each tank every second. When it goes in it looks as you imagine ‘sewage’ would look. When it comes out, thanks to the bacteria living inside, it’s clear.
Six months down the track both BTFs are up and running, and all the most important parts of the plant are back online.
There is still work to be done and a lot of that has to do with building in added resilience to the plant and future-proofing parts that may be at risk again.
We’ve had to rebuild but in doing that wherever possible we will make things better, safer, stronger than they were before.
Looking at how far things have come at the WWTP, the things that have helped get us through are probably the same things that have helped all of Hawke’s Bay begin to recover.
The bravery and quick-thinking of individuals during crisis made challenges surmountable.
The expertise and willingness to step beyond comfort zones meant things have begun to return to normal faster than we thought they could.
And the drive to help and the determination to keep going, have meant that bit by bit, as a community, we are getting the jobs done, and we’re moving forward together.
- Kirsten Wise is the mayor of Napier
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