Overdue stock-truck effluent disposal facility opens

A new stock-truck effluent disposal facility in Wellsford – for Northland livestock transporters using State Highway 1 – was opened by Rodney Mayor Penny Webster and the NZ Transport Agency’s regional director for Auckland and Northland, Wayne McDonald, last month.

Work started on the $450,000 facility in March and was funded by the NZ Transport Agency and Rodney District Council.

Situated within the Wellsford stockyards with land provided by Associated Auctioneers, the facility is part of a strategic network of in-transit stock-truck effluent disposal sites throughout the North Island. Four other effluent disposal facilities are located at Tapapa (SH5), Taupo (SH1), Stratford (SH1) and Waverley (SH3).

Mr McDonald says the Wellsford effluent disposal facility gives stock truck operators the opportunity to unload stock effluent from their holding tanks while travelling between Northland and Auckland.

“This has enormous benefits for both motorists and the truck operators themselves,” he says. “The spillage of untreated, concentrated effluent onto the state highway is always dangerous and can find its way into nearby waterways, harming the environment.”

Mr McDonald says that effluent spillage presently corrodes the highway’s asphalt surface making it slippery and dangerous. It is also a major contributor to the formation of potholes on the road surface.

The disposal facility is solar powered and uses smart infrared technology to measure effluent flow and levels into the disposal unit.

National Road Carriers executive officer Paula Davies says the Wellsford effluent disposal facility has taken some 15 years to get to where it is today, so is long overdue but immensely welcomed by the livestock transport industry. She says emphasis however must still go into minimising the effluent at the initial source, ‘the farmer’s gate’.