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Sewage Spill Finally Gets Big Warning Signs
New Plymouth residents have been alerted to the district’s latest sewage spill with prominent signs, after the local council failed to post sufficient warnings about earlier contaminations.
On Sunday heavy rain overwhelmed a pump station, with the overflow spilling into the Tasman Sea.
New Plymouth District Council advised the discharge through the Eliot Street outfall began just after 5pm on Sunday afternoon and lasted 56 minutes.
“The cause of the discharge was due to high and intense rainfall overwhelming our Te Hēnui Pump Station during an adverse weather event and our team responded to get the pump station up and running again to stop the overflow,” the council advised.
“Warning signs against swimming and collecting kai have been erected at various locations.”
The pledge of warning signs is standard on the council’s public pollution alerts, but the promise has not been met in previous spills.
This time an easily-visible sign warning of a sewage discharge has been cable-tied to a fence closest to the Eliot Street outfall on the city’s coastal walkway.
On the other side of the outfall the warning arrow on a permanent sign at the East End Reserve has been moved from orange-alert ‘no shellfish gathering’ to red-alert ‘no swimming, no shellfish or food gathering’.
In January, a tiny sign the length of two ballpoint pens pinned low on just one of 30 parking bollards wasn’t enough to stop a whānau swimming in – and accidentally swallowing water from – a river polluted by sewage.
At that time New Plymouth District Council said its warning signs near the Waiwhakaiho River matched the risk – yet it changed a crucial alert sign from green to red only after Local Democracy Reporting raised concerns.
A year earlier another brief rainstorm overwhelmed the biological treatment capacity of the wastewater plant, sending partially untreated sewage through the marine outfall at the mouth of the Waiwhakaiho.
Although screened and disinfected, the wastewater was risky enough to close swimming and kai gathering at the city’s most acclaimed beaches for 48 hours at the height of summer.
But the ban didn’t stop Taranaki Regional Councillor and surfer advocate Craig Williamson from taking to the waves with his daughter – without telling her about the pollution.
Back then Williamson – who now chairs the water-watchdog regional council – confirmed the promised signage from NPDC was a mirage.
“There's no signage. People don't know.”
Over the past eight years New Plymouth suffered an average of 20 sewage spills a year, mostly caused by fat blockages, heavy rain flooding or tree roots.
LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ on Air
Local Democracy Reporting
Content from the Local Democracy Reporting (LDR) service is published by Scoop as a registered New Zealand Media Outlet LDR Partner.
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