Thames area treatment plants need upgrade

By QUENTIN CLARKSON

THAMES - The Thames Coromandel District Council needs to find $40 million over 10 years for improvements to its 20 water and wastewater plants, none of which is up to scratch.

Environment Waikato says not one of the plants fully complies with its resource consent conditions.

Problems include seepage, exceeding consented volumes, unauthorised discharges, runoff, repeated overflows, poor maintenance and a failure to report smell complaints.

District council chief executive Steve Ruru said the water quality of the nine water and 11 wastewater plants was fine, although he could not say by how much rates would rise to pay for new sewage systems because each Coromandel area had a slightly different system.

His findings are in a report that highlights problems needing to be addressed to bring the plants up to standard. The warts-and-all report was presented to Environment Waikato's regulatory committee last week along with another on resource consent compliance, which was jointly funded by both councils.

Mr Ruru said the $40 million upgrade included a $9 million spray irrigation plant at Cooks Beach, expanding a similar scheme in Whangamata and shifting the spray irrigation plant in Tairua/Pauanui.

He said the two biggest problems outlined in the report were population growth, particularly between Whangamata and Whitianga, and the pressure on holiday areas during summer.

The peninsula's heavy rainfall also made the situation worse.

The tally of 21,000 rateable properties on the Coromandel was expected to grow 35 per cent in the next 10 years, he said.

The population also swelled to 180,000 during summer.

A spokesman for Cleanwater Whangamata, Paul Shanks, said all of the Coromandel sewage systems were undersized when built.

"They haven't upgraded them since they built these plants 10 years ago."

He said the small size of the Tairua/Pauanui system helped to cause the overflow of 10,000 cu m of partly treated sewage into the Tairua Harbour when a containment bank collapsed in January.

Tairua Environment Society chairman John Drummond said the proposed spray irrigation and gravel seep upgrade to the Tairua/Pauanui plant would not be good enough. The council claimed it would produce faecal coliform levels of 100 per 100ml, which would dilute in the harbour, he said.

The maximum allowable level for safe bathing was 150 per 100ml.

Yet Mr Drummond said levels should be closer to the safe level for shellfish of 14 per 100ml.

"I don't think there are any wastewater plants in Coromandel that are well-managed," he said.

"Whatever Coromandel community you look into, they are having problems with wastewater."

Mercury Bay Community Board chairwoman Joan Gaskell said the system in her area worked, but she would prefer to see trickle irrigation used rather than spray irrigation because it could be done in community areas such as airfields and sportsfields.

Pauanui Ratepayers' Association chairwoman Colleen Buckley said that the proposed system for her area seemed to be good enough, "although there could be loopholes that we will have to live with."