Scheme vital for the environment
The days of pumping treated sewage and other wastewater along pipes and into Lyttelton harbour thankfully appear numbered with the announcement on Tuesday of a $52.4 million plan to improve the quality of water in the harbour.
The project, if it receives all the requisite approvals and consents, will be a huge engineering undertaking, involving several new pumping stations and overflow tanks, pipes being buried into the harbour floor and a major new artery through which untreated sewage can be pushed uphill from Lyttelton through the road tunnel to Heathcote and eventually onwards to the Bromley wastewater treatment plant. Treatment plants at Diamond Harbour and Governors Bay will be decommissioned and instead untreated waste from there will be channelled through the submarine pipes to Lyttelton. The Christchurch City Council’s intention is to begin construction work in November next year, or earlier if Environment Canterbury grants resource consents sooner, and have the system fully operating by 2021. Residents and runanga have been vocal in their opposition to discharges – even treated ones – into the harbour to stop and, after public consultation, the city council in 2009 approved instead the recommendation to pump untreated wastewater through the Port Hills to Bromley.
The latest announcement is good news for those who live around the harbour and good news also for all those who enjoy or rely on the recreational, environmental and commercial amenity values of Lyttelton Harbour.
The project will hardly come as a surprise to many, although the intercession of the earthquakes in the years since the council’s decision to deal with all untreated sewage at Bromley did take the issue away from the public spotlight.
Nobody should be pumping even treated sewage into the sea any longer. This scheme will bring important environmental and cultural benefits, and the knowledge that the sparkling waters of Lyttelton Harbour will, in a few years’ time, be as free from wastewater contamination as possible.