Toxic water readings stun expert
Bacteria levels in Herald tests of city sites ‘dangerously high’, says biologist
‘Dangerously high” levels of bacteria indicating the presence of faeces have been found at two sites in Auckland’s inner suburbs following water quality tests conducted by the New Zealand Herald Focus team.
A sample from Cox’s Creek near Cox’s Bay revealed E. coli levels of 590 cfu/100ml — about four times the 126 cfu limit for recreation.
A second sample taken at the head of Cox’s Creek near Kelmarna Ave found E. coli at 190,000 cfu/100ml — more than 1500 times the upper safe limit and a serious threat to human health.
Wastewater biologist Gemma Tolich Allen said the result showed “dangerously high” levels of E. coli, a bacteria that indicates the presence of animal or human faecal matter.
She said Auckland’s sewerage system is heading to Second World status, because the council and Watercare allow untreated sewage into city harbours.
The tests — the samples were taken last Thursday and analysed by Watercare’s Laboratory Services division — follow a Herald investigation into Auckland’s sewage shame.
It has found one million cubic metres of wastewater and raw sewage is pouring into the harbour each year from 41 points around the inner city suburbs.
Swimming has also been banned at 10 Auckland beaches this summer because of worsening pollution from human and animal wastes.
Tolich Allen says the Herald Focus readings are “extraordinarily high.”
“Nobody should be swimming at that beach. You wouldn’t want your dog drinking from there, you certainly wouldn’t want children to be playing anywhere near there.”
Tolich Allen says Auckland’s growing population, intensification and the council and Watercare’s failure to act means the issue is getting worse.
“I’d say we are heading down to Second World status. I don’t think you can claim First World status when you’re discharging untreated sewage into your coastal environment. Sadly people are only aware of the problem during summer, but it’s happening all year round.”
Mayor Phil Goff has said water bills may have to rise to clean up the dirty harbour and instructed Watercare and council’s Healthy Waters division to look at options and costings to speed up work.
“I think Aucklanders accept . . . that we have to invest in clean and safe beaches,” Goff said.
Work is due to begin in the current council term on a $1 billion “Central Interceptor” pipe that cuts overflows into natural waterways by 80 per cent.
The remaining 20 per cent will be reduced only after the spending of a further $300 million on upgrading sewers feeding into the new pipe and $325m on a planned Waterfront Interceptor to tackle waste from St Mary’s Bay and other shoreline suburbs.
Watercare chief executive Raveen Jaduram said in an email to councillor Mike Lee last year the council was allowing developments to occur knowing there was no adequate stormwater system and this would result in more frequent harbour spills.
As much as practical, Jaduram said, stormwater needed to be separated from the wastewater system. He stood by the comments yesterday.
Council Healthy Waters general manager Craig McIlroy said the wholesale separation of 16,000 homes on the old combined sewer waste water system did not make economic or social sense.
He said future growth would not have a significant impact on water quality.
“The adverse effect of more housing will be offset by short-term improvements such as requiring onsite detention of stormwater in combined areas before the new interceptors are built,” McIlroy said.
Council has provided figures to the Herald showing stormwater spending for growth, renewals, flood alleviation and environmental protection has increased since the Super City was formed in 2010.
In the first full financial year, stormwater spending was $59m, well short of the $105m spent by the seven former territorial councils before the global financial crisis.
Since then, Auckland Council has increased stormwater spending to $110m and budgeted $150m this financial year.
Aucklanders are a hypocritical bunch. We pollute our precious inner harbour beaches to such an unhealthy state, we have to drive for hours seeking somewhere clean and green to relax.
But when we arrive, we discover the dairy cows got their first.
The pristine lakes and streams of childhood memory are now just as bad as the Piha Lagoon or Cox’s Bay.
So we return home astride our moral high horse, railing against farmers.
The Herald’s latest expose of Auckland’s creaking sewerage system is a timely reminder that as long as we continue fouling our own nest, we are no better than the cow cockies we so enjoy bad-mouthing.
Like every mayor before him, newcomer Phil Goff finds the frequent overflow of raw sewage in to the Waitemata “completely unacceptable”.
To demonstrate he truly meant business, a good first step would be to tell Watercare Services, the council’s water and wastewater arm, the rules had changed.
Currently, there’s a deal between Watercare and the council, its owner/regulator, to both turn a blind eye to “uncontrolled overflows . . . during heavy rain”.
Watercare’s latest “Asset Management Plan 2016 to 2036” admits that around half of the wastewater system’s 110 overflow outlets “discharge more than 50 times per year” into the Waitemata Harbour.
In fact, Watercare admits elsewhere that most of these 50 trouble spots spew filth into the harbour every time it rains.
The official Network Discharge Consent, which Auckland Council granted Watercare in June 2014, appears strict.
It sternly sets a limit of just two wet weather overflows a year from each “overflow point”.
However, there’s a huge escape valve built into the consent which makes it a joke.
Watercare and Auckland Council, you see, can get together at any time and “agree a higher overflow frequency, if appropriate.”
The end result is signs, like that at Cox’s Bay, where the overflows are so regular there’s a permanent health warning sign banning swimming, collecting shellfish “or other water activities”.
Yesterday I received pictures from a Sandringham resident of waste floating down Meola Creek following the weekend’s storms.
He said the stench of sewage was again floating across suburban backyards.
It reminded me of a walk I took last winter along Parawai Crescent on the fringes of Cox’s Creek Reserve in Grey Lynn.
In a dip in the road adjacent to the park entry, you were enveloped in a lavatorial stench.
I naively thought a pipe must have burst.
A local quickly put me right. It was a normality locals had
I naively thought a pipe must have burst. A local quickly put me right. It was a normality locals had learnt to put up with.
learnt to put up with.
There’d been a burst of remedial activity in the late 1990s, and a flurry of consulting in 2005 to address the Cox’s Bay problem. But the stench lingers.
True, there are plans for $3 billion-plus worth of new pipeworks to carry the wastewater off to the Mangere treatment plant.
But the first stage, to begin next year, will take 10 years to complete. Even then, it will only reduce the overflow by 80 per cent.
So it’s hardly surprising locals are opposed to housing intensification projects that will add to the effluent overflow.
The current flashpoint is the planned six-storey 70-apartment complex on the site of the old Gables Tavern at the corner of Kelmarna Ave and Jervois Rd.
It is just up the road from the Cox’s Bay emergency “long drop”.
This project, fast-tracked with the aid of the Special Housing Areas Act will, within three years, add the effluent of another 70 households to a sewerage system that already overflows into Cox’s Creek more than once a week.
Mayor Goff’s response was, in effect, to tell the locals to put a peg on their noses.
He said the problem was not the newcomers, but the 16,000 existing homes which were connected to the area’s old combined stormwater/sewer system.
Exactly what point he was making is unclear.
It’s not as though the existing residents have an alternative to hook up to.
And while it’s true the stormwater from the new development has to be reticulated to temporary holding tanks, the sewage and grey water can not be, going straight into the overloaded existing infrastructure.
Farmers plead for more time to abate their polluting ways, and we city folk rightly roll our eyes and tell them to stop destroying our clean and green land.
It’s time we Aucklanders stopped and looked in the mirror.