A $4.4 million upgrade of the Kawakawa sewerage treatment plant has been completed just before deadline.
Partly treated effluent spilled from the plant into the Kawakawa River and Bay of Islands last year.
The Far North District Council had until yesterday to double the capacity of the treatment plant in order to
comply with a condition of the plant's resource consent.
In July last year, controlled and uncontrolled spills of partly treated sewage and effluent flowed into the Kawakawa River from the plant after heavy rain, closing oyster farms in the Upper Waikare Inlet in the Bay of Islands.
FNDC spokesman Rick McCall said the plant now had the capacity to treat up to 1600 cu m of effluent a day. The work was completed five days ahead of schedule.
Northland Regional Council staff visited the plant yesterday and had given it a "clean bill of health", Mr McCall said.
Water infiltration into the sewerage system had also been addressed as part of the upgrade.
Three hundred properties had been identified as putting storm water into the sewerage system. Of those 270 were now fully compliant.
"The effluent level in the ponds is now way down. It's almost at the point we don't have sufficient material to process - we've gone from one extreme to another," Mr McCall said.
Northland Federated Farmers spokesman Bill Guest welcomed the improvements but said the upgrade came far too late for 12 oyster farmers in Waikare Inlet who had been unable to farm for four years due to pollution.
Their farms were closed by health authorities in 2001 after traces of a virus causing gastroenteritis and diarrhoea were found in oysters harvested there.
The farmers have lodged a $10 million-plus claim for damages against the Far North District Council because the Kawakawa plant was identified in a report as one of four possible sources of contamination. The FNDC denies any liability.
The Northland Regional Council, health authorities, Transit New Zealand and the Bay of Islands College have since been dragged into the claim.
Northland Health and the Ministry of Fisheries were now reviewing the water quality in the area to decide whether the farms could reopen, Mr Guest said.
