Extending the Mangawhai Wastewater Scheme

 

When the Auditor General undertook her investigations into the Mangawhai community wastewater scheme, she reviewed the purpose, the operations, and the capacity of the plant. She concluded that:

• The Council’s de-cision that Mangawhai needed a centralised reticulated wastewa-ter scheme was sound-ly based and reached through a good process.
• The wastewater scheme that has been built works effectively and has appropriate ca-pacity for population growth.

Most residents concur with her conclusion on the need for the scheme. Septic tanks in a grow-ing Mangawhai threat-ened the health of our harbour.

Like the Auditor Gen-eral’s conclusion, Coun-cil’s investigations sug-gest that the processing plant has considerable capacity – for around 4,000 connections in to-tal. Currently there are 1630 properties connect-ed to the scheme.

However, there are constraining factors relating to disposal. The irrigation system at the Brown’s Road farm that is being used to dis-perse the treated effluent needs to be expanded to cope with additional con-nections. Council is ex-ploring options. Longer term, as reticulation is expanded, additional dis-posal capacity will be re-quired. Council is explor-ing options for this also.

Alongside this work, we are exploring the most appropriate ar-eas for additional con-nections. There are ap-proximately 530 existing properties that are “con-nectable”, but for vari-ous reasons are not yet connected. In addition to these properties, fur-ther properties will be-come connectable when additional reticulation is built. Just where this reticulation should be laid, and how it should be staged, forms another work-stream.

New connections and additional reticulation raises the question of who should pay the cap-ital development costs, including pumps where these are needed. A household typically con-nects to the public reticu-lation system by what is referred to as a “private drain”. Sometimes these private drains are shared between two or more households, and some-times they have pumps attached. Then there is the question of the main-tenance of pipes and pumps that are on pri-vate land.

Some of these matters of policy are guided by legislation. All of them need clarity.

When the Mangawhai scheme was built and connections made, such policies were formed. However, from what we can see, these policies did not cover all matters, and policies changed through time. It is important that Council tidies up the pol-icy framework to ensure clarity and equity.

Council will consult on these matters. We will seek assistance to consider the various op-tions – where new retic-ulation should go; where the public and private realms best sit; and how we best secure equity be-tween property owners who are currently con-nected, are connectable, and those who will be re-quired to have new con-nections. We intend to set up an advisory group that includes members from the community to guide us through these matters.

The Mangawhai Council Office
The Council recent-ly took additional office space in Mangawhai to accommodate its opera-tions. Most of the staff who work in Mangawhai are involved in building and resource consenting, regulatory enforcement, customer service, and planning work. Mem-bers of Council’s senior management team often work from this office.

Commissioners spend time on the east-ern side of the Kaipara District – in Mangawhai and Kaiwaka and Maun-gaturoto – each week. If you want to meet with one of us please con-tact the Council on (09) 431 3161, or email Anna Curnow acurnow@kai-para.govt.nz. I am at the Mangawhai office most Monday mornings.

Economic Growth
Building activity in the eastern side of the district continues to show strength. In the June quarter of this year, there were 36 residential building consents in the Kaipara District. They were mainly concentrat-ed in the east, and are the highest level since the June quarter 2010.

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