On Monday July 25th, Waikato District Council advised of yet another sewage spill into Raglan Harbour.
As some of the statements in the council’s media release did not seem to make sense, I emailed them with the following query:
I do not understand the relevance of the comment about manholes not being monitored.
The issue is that a monitored pump station stopped working due to a power failure. This should have sent an alarm on the monitoring system.
Council knows the storage capacity of its pumping stations and typical flow rates.
It therefore knew that after a given time the storage capacity would be exceeded.
Then the sewers would back up until they leaked somewhere.
Please advise why WDC did not act when it became obvious that storage capacity would be exceeded and an overflow would occur.
Thanks,
Rodger Gallagher
When the council responds I’ll add their reply to this post. And remember that once again this Ngaruawahia based council advises Raglanites not to swim, fish or collect shellfish from Raglan Harbour until further notice.