Far North District Council must spend $195,000 on its Kawakawa water treatment plant

The Kawakawa Water Treatment plant supplies drinking water to Kawakawa and Moerewa residents. Photo / Michael Cunningham

Kawakawa's water treatment plant has failed a health-and-safety audit and Far North District Council has to spend $195,000 urgently upgrading it or face a $450,000 fine.

The almost 50-year-old plant supplies drinking water to Kawakawa and Moerewa.

The Reservoir Rd facility is one of nine FNDC water and wastewater treatment plants and Andy Finch, the council's general manager for infrastructure and asset management, said the plants needed significant health and safety compliance work.

The audit, done in December, was part of an ongoing programme at the council's water and wastewater plants.

At last week's council meeting Finch got approval for the Kawakawa plant spend.

"If approval is not provided to undertake the required identified work, then there is a risk that Work Safe will impose a fine of up to $450,000," he warned. Finch said the upgrade was needed to complete health and safety compliance work as a result of legislation changes.

Councillor John Vujcich wanted to know the full cost of the work across all the council's water schemes.

Cr Felicity Foy said the HSWA compliance programme addressed normal maintenance work council should have been doing over the past "many years".

She wanted a staged approach to addressing the work on the council's water infrastructure.

Kawakawa plant test certifiers investigated what was needed to make sure it complied with HSWA regulations. They also looked at what controls and documentation were available, Finch said.

"The test certifiers identified that additional work and new equipment was required to ensure the plant fully complied. As a temporary measure, the test certifiers allowed for emergency works to allow the plant to continue operating," he said.

Work included putting ventilation openings in chlorine room and lining its ceiling with chlorine-gas resistant and fire-retardant material plus installing an auto shut-off valve in the chlorine delivery line.

A new fire-retardant wall is also required to increase the separation distance between plant chemical storage areas.

All PVC pipework has to be replaced with high-density polyethylene, and electrical fittings must be upgraded.

Other work includes a new fire door and a new engineered concrete slab for a new above-ground tank.

Seismic restraints have to be fitted to all above-ground storage tanks. Double containment is needed for new chemical storage tanks and leak monitoring devices have to be installed.

Documentation is also needed around plant processes, instrumentation and layout.

The plant has several individual buildings including a chemical house, filter gallery, filters, sedimentation tanks flash mixer, clear water reservoir and sludge decanting tank. All of these, except for the decanting tank, were built in 1971. It failed a Health and Safety at Work Act (HSWA) (Hazardous Substances) Regulations 2017 compliance audit in December.