Water issue could be nearing end
"We look forward to providing the residents of Foxton Beach with sparkling water." Paul Gaydon, Horowhenua District Council water and waste services manager
A solution could be in sight for Foxton Beach’s much-criticised water supply.
Horowhenua District Council has received four complaints about the town’s water this year – two for water clarity and two for taste – but the council has taken temporary measures to deal with the problem, and is trialling a new process for a longer-term fix.
The water is sometimes discoloured, but is not considered a health risk.
Ann and Max Broadbent moved into the Forbes Rd subdivision six months ago.
They inspected their filtration system earlier this month, and found about 50 millilitres of ‘‘brown slimy sludge’’ in their micro-polymer filter, which noticeably affected their water pressure.
‘‘The sediment in the bottom of the case is disgusting ... people are drinking this stuff,’’ Ann Broadbent said.
Horowhenua District Council water and waste services manager Paul Gaydon said the sludge was manganese dioxide.
Dissolved manganese often appears in groundwater supplies, and can cause taste and staining problems.
However, relief may be on the way – Gaydon said the council was trialling a new process at the Foxton Beach Water Treatment Plant, and hoped to have a solution in place within six months. He did not comment on details of the trial.
Ann Broadbent said the problem was not limited to their home.
‘‘These are new houses. I spoke to a neighbour who thought he’d forgotten to flush the toilet, but realised it was just the water.’’
She said she was aware of the water problems, but not the extent of them, when she moved from Mt Pirongia in Waikato.
The pair had been using tank water for about 45 years and never had a problem.
They installed a three-filter system in their garage, including micro-polymer, paper and UV filters.
Ann Broadbent said the water looked cleaner, but the filter did not fix the taste.
As the trial continued, Gaydon said a filtered water dispenser had been installed at Holben Reserve on a temporary basis.
‘‘We look forward to providing the residents of Foxton Beach with sparkling water.’’
Foxton Beach’s supply is taken from the same underground water source as Foxton’s.
Foxton’s water has been criticised for tasting like dirt, and its brown colour. Manganese in the main water pipes had been discolouring the water.
The water is treated for its ammonia content and with chlorine.
The Foxton Community Board proposed digging bores to a 400-metre depth to reach new aquifers, 200m lower than the current ones, late last year. The deeper bore was found to be of worse quality than the existing one, Gaydon said.
In August, the water was made more alkaline to help reduce manganese buildup.
The council had not received a complaint about the Foxton supply this year. Back in the day, when children were allowed to go out to play after dinner, many families had a rule of thumb.
Be home before the street lights come on.
The system depends on the street lights getting it right.
Palmerston North-based Powerco planning team leader Ken Pattie, who has been in the business for 40 years, can see whether or not it is working from his Mihaere Drive office.
There, in real time, the System Control and Data Acquisition system, Scada, displays exactly what is going on throughout the network.
Confusing for a lay person, red means the power is flowing as it should. Green, usually the good guy, means something has shut off.
While Scada might be modern, Pattie said basic street light technology had not changed much since a New Zealand engineer invented ripple control in the 1930s.
The street light signal is triggered by daylight sensors at the Bunnythorpe substation for one side of the city, and Linton for the other.
That is why sometimes, the street lights are triggered earlier at one end of town than the other.
The sensors signal the injection plant, rolling the message through the sub-transmission lines to transformers and their relay devices. The frequency recognised, the street lights come on electronically, automatically and simultaneously.
The daylight sensors do not rest during the day. If it clouds over and visibility goes down, they will trigger the lights to come on in the middle of the day.
If there is a problem with a group of street lights, that is most often a Powerco problem, as the supplier owns the cables, mostly underground.
If a single light is not working, that is most likely to be the city council’s problem. It owns the lights themselves.
‘‘Multiple lights is almost always our problem. We have staff on 24 hours who can find the fault and carry out repairs.’’
‘‘We have staff on 24 hours who can find the fault and carry out repairs.’’ Ken Pattie, Powerco planning team leader
But whether it is one street light or a collection, faults should be reported to the city council’s call centre.
Pattie unlocked the door on the shed containing the injection plant at Bunnythorpe, a critical substation in the national system, about as close as a person can get to 33,000 volt transmission lines from the South Island and Haywards, Wellington.
Somewhere in among those coils and capacitors and lowvoltage transformers was the plant that injects the signals into the network that trigger the lights.
But the exact location of the daylight sensor remains under wraps for security reasons.