Wastewater plant malfunction

There was another malfunction at the Raglan wastewater plant from midnight Thursday to just before 5am on Friday 15th May. Waikato District Council says that during this time 400,000 litres of fully treated wastewater was discharged. The Council’s Waters Manger, Mr Mould, said , “There are no health issues likely and no further action required at the site”. As the discharge took place outside the permitted hours under the resource consent, the Waikato Regional Council has been advised about it.

Mr Mould went on to add that, “The issue appears to have been caused by a computer programme fault however this will be fully investigated to determine the root cause and to rectify.” Perhaps the issue was caused by bad programming and Mr Mould needs to check that also.

In August 2014, Waikato District Council approved a project which it said would mitigate one aspect of the sewage overflows into Raglan Harbour. The meeting approved acceleration of a project to improve the radio control system (SCADA) that monitors the Council’s wastewater network. 

A major spill at the Raglan plant in 2013 saw the Council fined by Hamilton District Court Judge David Kirkpatrick. The judge noted that errors committed by district council staff were “of a systemic nature, revealing poor training, supervision and ultimate management”.

Raglan Greens say that this topic can be discussed at today’s plastic bag meeting (noon The Raglan House, Bow St. Another opportunity is the Long Term Plan Submissions Meeting on Tuesday 19th from 1pm at the Raglan Bowling Club. This is one of the rare occasions when all Councillors and senior staff come to Raglan at the same time. To speak at the meeting you would need to have already made a submission to the LTP and been allotted a time to speak.

The full advice from the Council Waters Manager follows:

From: Martin Mould <Martin.Mould@waidc.govt.nz>
Subject: Raglan WWTP – Discharge outside of hours
Date: 15 May 2015 4:58:28 pm +1200