It’s been suggested that it’s time for Raglanites to adopt a sewage pump. Undertaking research into his submission on the sewage surcharge proposed by Waikato District Council, Raglanite Ken Soanes found that the radio systems of many sewage pump stations were in a poor state of repair. These radio systems are the critical tool that should allow the Waikato District Council to manage the pumps and avoid sewage spills into the harbour. The new volunteer teams keeping Bow Street looking so tidy have been a great success. It’s now been suggested that similar volunteer teams could keep a watch on the many sewage pump stations around Raglan harbour.
Ken Soanes said, “This week I went for a walk about some of Raglan’s Pump stations. I was shocked to find that the radio telemetry alarms at these stations in such an obviously poor state of repair. Broken antenna, directional antenna pointing at right angles to the repeater and worst of all most had extensive foliage about the antenna degrading the radio signal integrity. This shows that the system is not maintained correctly. The importance of testing signal strength while carrying out maintenance is so important. Trees grow, building are erected and so on and these factors top the alarms working. In a rainfall event, pump station monitoring is most important I very much doubt that a signal would get through from many stations. I believe that council operations would not know if a pump station malfunction has occurred. They would only get an alarm when the backup overflow mobile phone text (SMS) alarm triggers.”
The adopt a sewage pump scheme would see local residents keep an eye on their local pump and trim back fern and other foliage from the pump stations. They would also do a physical check on radio aerials and report to council staff any obvious breakages and aerials pointing in completely the wrong direction.
Ken Soanes added, “The Datran radio alarm system is used successfully by a large number of councils throughout New Zealand and it is quite suitable for an operation of the size of Waikato District Council. If the foliage problem is attended to and the radio aerials are fixed the council will save $1.6 million.”
So saving the harbour and reducing costs is a great objective making it very worthwhile for volunteer teams to adopt a sewage pump so they all work properly.
WDC’s General Manager Service Delivery Tim Harty said:
The radio telemetry alarms at the Raglan pump stations are regularly maintained and any issues are corrected as identified.
All pump stations are automatically monitored every 30 seconds to check for communications. In the event of a no-response from a pump station an alarm is raised on the base station and contractors are sent to investigate. There have been no issues regardless of the weather.
The pump stations in Raglan are checked on a weekly basis and we are not aware of any foliage issues.
We do appreciate the community’s interest in helping the Council to minimise sewage overflows. While we value and encourage the public’s feedback on the state of our assets we would discourage physical checks on radio aerials at pump stations.
This requires specific expertise and could pose a health and safety risk. If the people of Raglan notice problems through sight alone we would appreciate them letting us know so we can address these as soon as possible.