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The recent extreme storm events have again forced Watercare to discharge partially treated wastewater from its Omaha treatment plant to prevent the storage dam from bursting its banks.
A Watercare spokesperson said the exceptional volumes coming into the plant off Jones Road since the January 27 floods and Cyclone Gabrielle left staff with no other option.
“Because of these high inflows, we had to use the temporary bypass first installed in July last year to manage the volumes that needed to be discharged,” he said.
“This was our only option at the time to help protect the structural integrity of the site’s storage dam.”
Watercare first had to bypass the Omaha storage dam last July after exceptionally heavy winter rains, pumping post-treatment pond water into the stormwater system, which empties into the Whangateau Harbour. Staff said at the time that the water quality was sampled regularly and bacteria levels had been lower downstream from the discharge area than upstream from it.
Watercare said last week that the Omaha treatment plant had not suffered any significant damage from the recent weather events, and neither had any of its infrastructure projects in Warkworth and Snells Beach.
“The Snells Beach Wastewater Treatment Plant – currently undergoing a $128 million upgrade that will cater for growth in Auckland’s north and improve the water quality in the Mahurangi River – received some minor damage to an access road during the January flood,” he said. “Site works were not affected and the access road was repaired within a few days. Cyclone Gabrielle caused only minor damage to one of the treatment plant’s pipes, and there was no significant damage at our pump station construction site at Lucy Moore Memorial Park, or to our Warkworth to Snells Beach Wastewater Transfer Pipeline project.”
