Eketāhuna stormwater project a pilot for district

Eketāhuna's wastewater treatment plant, accessed from Bridge St.

A project to investigate problems of stormwater in the sewer network could, if successful, eventually be carried out in other Tararua District townships.

Tararua District Council project manager Eugene Priest told a meeting of Eketāhuna Community board that flow monitors would be put into into publicly-owned wastewater mains in the next two weeks.

“These monitors will capture data for up to six to eight weeks and that data would be used to pretty much target where we need to do more source detection works.”

They would also tell the council where CCTV camera work or smoke detection would be needed to try to pinpoint any issues.

The team working on the project would do a leaflet drop to households and the council would also inform the public through social media and the website for any further work to make sure everyone was kept in the loop.

Priest said the investigation would be in the sewer network to pinpoint or locate cross connections with stormwater.

He said the catalyst for the project was the upgrade of the wastewater treatment plant, adding that they had done a tender for designs and it could cost between $10 and $15 million “to have a plant that took care of everything”.

“It is a significant amount which is why it costs so much to take care of all the stormwater into our sewage.”

Board member Larissa Barclay asked questions around the stormwater.

“Moving on from an investigation finding out where the stormwater is getting in, where is that stormwater going to be coming out of? How is it going to be documented?”

Priest said it was one of the critical questions that would come up as part of the report which would show where the issues were and any recommended fixes.

“Then we have to look at how we take care of that stormwater” such as stopping it going into the wastewater treatment plant and putting in infrastructure to put that stormwater where it was supposed to go.

Member Terry Carew said if they could find out where the stormwater was coming out of, then they could control it.

He asked if the stormwater could then be utilised within the township in some way such as for watering gardens or laws.

“Just some ideas around it, because it’s going to cost money to clean it or put it somewhere. Can’t we just take the extra little step and see what it costs to utilise it for some good purpose?”

“I think you’ll find most of the stormwater is channelled down into the Makakahi River,” Priest said.

He added they would probably have to do some works around utilising the drainage that was already there.

He said there were a lot of private properties that did have stormwater put straight into the sewer network.

“It’s about managing that and providing infrastructure to have somewhere else to put that stormwater.”

Priest noted that designing a possible retention facility for stormwater to be able to use for other purposes would probably cost “quite a lot”.

Councillor Mike Long agreed with Carew’s suggestion and added a recommendation of putting a rainwater tank in houses, if people could afford it.

“The other thing is that this community has an opportunity to do this job really well and to show the rest of Tararua [District] by reducing that stormwater into the sewerage network, you can save multi-millions of dollars on a treatment plant down here.

“And that will be teaching the rest of the community, because this is the start for Tararua [District]. If this is successful, we will carry on doing the other towns.”

Priest agreed, saying that this was a pilot project for Eketāhuna .

“If we do well here and we can achieve the goals we want to, then we can carry on to other towns, because it also creates capacity in the sewer network to be able to have the extra subdivisions or other people come on and then obviously reducing the cost at the other end.”

The project would likely take until December as any smoke testing would need to be done in a dry environment, he said.